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Tony Awards 2012: 'Once' wins eight times, and Jersey woman Nina Arianda triumphs

Tony Awards 2012: 'Once' wins eight times, and Jersey woman Nina Arianda triumphs

From indie film to Tony winner, "Once" came out on prime at the 66th Annual Tony awards last night.

But not like last year, at that "The Book of Mormon" swept the competition, wins were additional evenly split. And excitement came less from onstage performances -- several of that weren't this year's best, or perhaps this year's shows -- than from surprise wins and theater veteran appearances.

"Once" began because the front-runner with eleven nominations. Steve Kazee won for best actor in a very musical as a grief-stricken "Hoover-fixer," known merely as "Guy," who lets loose in song. In his speech, he gave a heartfelt tribute to his recently deceased mother and supportive solid.

"My mother ... continuously told me before shows to face up there and show them whose very little boy you're. and i am showing you nowadays that i'm the son of Kathy Withrow Kazee who lost the fight with cancer on Easter Sunday this year," he said.

Other "Once" winners included John Tiffany, who took the prize for direction, and Irish playwright Enda Walsh, who won best book of a musical. The show won a complete of eight awards.

Pulitzer Prize winner "Clybourne Park," that addresses race relations and gentrification, won best play.

"I got to thank Lorraine Hansberry, who truly designed the neighborhood of Clybourne Park. we tend to simply moved in and depressed the property values," said Bruce Norris, accepting the award for "Clybourne Park" -- that riffs on Hansberry's 1959 drama "A Raisin within the Sun."

"Death of a Salesman" won best revival of a play and best director for Mike Nichols, who earned his ninth award. In his speech, he noted that he once won a pie-eating contest within the area that's currently the Beacon Theatre. This, he said, was "nicer." however the show's momentum ran out for the actor races.

James Corden won best actor for his comic flip in "One Man, 2 Guvnors," a race within which his primary challenger was "Salesman" star Philip Seymour Hoffman.
New Jersey native Nina Arianda won her 1st award for leading actress in a very play -- most likely the foremost competitive class this year -- against Linda Lavin, Stockard Channing, Cynthia Nixon and Tracie Bennett.

"You were my 1st crush! When that whistle was blown in 'Sound of Music,' you created my day," said Arianda, accepting the award from presenter Christopher Plummer.

"Newsies," the primary direct-to-Broadway transfer from the Millburn's Paper Mill Playhouse, earned eight-time Oscar winner Alan Menken his 1st Tony for best score, beside lyricist and first-time nominee Jack Feldman. Christopher Gattelli's high-energy moves won best choreography.

"The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" upset the shutout "Follies" because the winner for best revival of a musical. Audra McDonald, evidently, won her 1st best actress Tony (but fifth Tony overall) as Bess.

"I was a trifle a lady with a potbelly and Afro puffs, hyperactive and overdramatic. and that i found stage and that i found my home," she said.

George and Ira additionally did well with "Nice Work If you'll be able to Get It," with best featured actor and actress for Michael McGrath as a '20s powerful guy and Guttenberg resident Judy Kaye as a chandelier-swinging Prohibitionist. Kaye noted in her speech that the sunshine fixtures are her good-luck charm. She previously won for "Phantom of the Opera."

Comedy once more trumped tragedy as "Smash" star Christian Borle won the featured actor award for "Peter and therefore the Starcatcher." Judith lightweight won her 1st Tony too as featured actress in "Other
Neil Patrick Harris, hosting for the third time, sang concerning the thrill of theater, joined by luminaries like Patti LuPone, who later appeared with former "Evita" co-star Mandy Patinkin.

Jeremy Jordan led the solid of "Newsies" in an acrobatic "Seize the Day," Josh Young sang the vocally acrobatic title variety from "Jesus Christ Superstar," and Kazee led "Gold" from "Once." McDonald and therefore the "Porgy" solid performed a greatest hits medley,

But, generally, where were the women? Even in "Evita," it had been Ricky Martin who sang as Che.

Bite-sized excerpts from plays shared the stage with musicals, as "One Man, 2 Guvnors" and "Peter and therefore the Starcatcher" -- each nominated for best score among a lack of worthy contenders -- and "End of the Rainbow" got some attractive scenes onstage.

A repeat performance by the solid of "The Book of Mormon" ("Hello") additional underscored the purpose that there was no breakout musical this year. As did showings by zero-nomination production "Godspell" and a cruise ship transmission of "Hairspray."

Still, there have been bright spots within the Broadway season. Forty new productions opened and Broadway saw a record box workplace at $1.14 billion. New musical theater stars like Jeremy Jordan, Josh Young and Cherry Hill native Cristin Milioti gave breakout performances and "Death of a Salesman" broke the house record at the Barrymore Theatre, creating quite $1 million in a very single week.

Also showing in Harris' gap number? Next season's "Annie," Lilla Crawford, who assured us that the sun would initiate tomorrow.

Tony Awards: 'Clybourne Park,' 'Once' are massive winners

Bruce Norris' "Clybourne Park," a sharp-toothed satirical drama concerning the vagaries of race and assets, won for best play, and "Once," a starry-eyed romance targeted on an Irish street musician and a Czech immigrant flower seller, topped the simplest musical class at Sunday's 66th Tony Awards.

The work of 3 legends of the yankee theater, playwright Arthur Miller and therefore the song-writing brothers George and Ira Gershwin, reaped multiple honors. Miller's blue-chip middle-American tragedy "Death of a Salesman" won for revival of a play.

For musical revival, Tony voters selected the slimmed version of the Gershwins' 1935 opera"Porgy and Bess," concerning the black denizens of a Charleston ghetto. The show, rechristened "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," triumphed over rival revivals "Jesus Christ Superstar,""Evita" and "Follies," whose composer, Stephen Sondheim, had publicly chastised the inventive team behind "Porgy and Bess" for allegedly tampering with a classic.
 

TONY AWARDS: Red carpet | Winners | Best & worst

In accepting the Tony, producer Jeffrey Richards pointedly thanked the Gershwin estate among others for "permission to bring 'Porgy and Bess' into the twenty first century."

Audra McDonald, previously a four-time winner for featured actress, finally won lead actress in a very musical for her stirring performance because the Gershwins' indomitable heroine.

"Once," a pocket musical that took several on Broadway unexpectedly this season, won eight awards. John Tiffany, creating his Broadway debut, won musical directing over knowledgeable rivals, together with nice White means veteran Kathleen Marshall. together with his lyrical Irish accent ringing through his acceptance speech, Tiffany acknowledged his family "who gave me the gift of music."

Other "Once" winners were Bob Crowley (scenic design), Natasha Katz (lighting design) and Clive Goodwin (sound design).

Early within the evening, there have been hints of a returning smackdown between "Once," tailored from a 2006 indie film, and "Newsies," a feel-good show a few turn-of-the-century the big apple newsboys' strike, tailored from a 1992 Disney film musical.

Before the telecast's official begin, "Once" won for orchestration (Martin Lowe), and Enda Walsh won for book of a musical. Meanwhile, Christopher Gattelli won choreography for "Newsies."

"Newsies" additionally won for score. Composer Alan Menken, an eight-time Oscar winner, and lyricist Jack Feldman joked that theirs was the primary musical to win each the Razzie and therefore the Tony for identical show.

The leading actor classes yielded many of the evening's most emotional acceptance speeches. McDonald teared up whereas recalling herself as a "hyper-active" "little woman with a pot belly" who'd found a home within the theater.

Steve Kazee, winner of lead actor in a very musical for "Once," thanked his fellow solid members for his or her support once the death of his mother, who passed on to the great beyond Easter Sunday.

Lead actor in a very play winner James Corden's elegant physical clowning in "One Man, 2 Guvnors," Richard Bean's transposition of Carlo Goldini's 1743 commedia dell'arte comedy to Sixties Brighton, England, earned him an upset victory over Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Death of a Salesman."

In his speech, Corden chokingly thanked his girlfriend, the mother of his kid.

"She's my baby mama, and that i cannot wait to marry her," Corden said. "She created me say 'us' rather than 'I' and 'we' rather than 'me.'"

Nina Arianda won lead actress in a very play for her flip as an bold young actress in David Ives' meta-fictional "Venus in Furs," based mostly on the classic erotic novel.

Hosted for the third time by Neil Patrick Harris, the show as usual alternated between kinetic musical numbers and additional down-tempo dramatic sketches.

"Clybourne Park," that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2011, was heavily favored to win the Tony. Set in a very Chicago neighborhood, split between 1959 and 2009, the drama could be a reasonably sequel to Lorraine Hansberry's landmark play "A Raisin within the Sun," that examines the impact 1st of integration, then, fifty years later, of gentrification on an inter-connected cluster of white and black characters.

"I got to thank Lorraine Hansberry, who truly designed the neighborhood of Clybourne Park," Norris said in his acceptance speech. "We simply moved in and depressed the property values."

Norris additionally gave a shout-out to many regional theaters, together with the Mark Taper Forum in l.  a.  , where "Clybourne Park" was made before its Broadway run.

In an interview before the awards, "Clybourne Park" producer Jordan Roth said, "L.A. audiences were a awfully vital a part of this journey. we tend to could not have done it while not them."

Mike Nichols, 80, an 18-time Tony nominee, earned his sixth Tony for helming the acclaimed revival of Miller's play. once kissing his wife, Diane Sawyer, Nichols took the stage to thank the playwright's daughter, Rebecca Miller, toast his solid as "straight from heaven," and laud Miller's work as a play that "gets more true as time goes by."

"There's not an individual during this theater who doesn't understand what it's to be a salesman," Nichols said.

But "Salesman's" stock slumped in another key class. Christian Borle, best known for NBC's "Smash," won for featured actor for taking part in a pirate within the Peter Pan origin myth "Peter and therefore the Starcatcher." Andrew Garfield, returning soon to a movie screen close to you because the latestSpider-Man, had been the category's serious favorite for his portrayal of Willy Loman's under-achieving son Biff in "Salesman."

Judith lightweight won the featured actress award for her putting flip united of the smallest amount sympathetic characters in Jon Robin Baitz's play "Other Desert Cities," a few Palm Springs clan grappling with a painful family secret. Linda Edmond had been slightly favored for "Death of a Salesman."

Michael McGrath won featured actor in a very musical for his portrayal of Cookie McGee, a bootlegger masquerading as a butler, within the reconstructed Gershwin Prohibition-era musical "Nice Work If you'll be able to Get It." His colleague Judy Kaye won featured actress for "Nice Work," her 1st since winning for "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1988.

"I guess chandeliers are terribly, excellent to me," Kaye joked.

A lifetime achievement award visited producer Emanuel Azenberg, whereas screen and stage star Hugh Jackman was honored for his philanthropic work on behalf of AIDS prevention. Jackman was presented the award by his wife who, he joked, "has never kept a secret her entire life."