(CBS News, 6/10.)
“Hadestown,” the brooding musical about the underworld, had a heavenly night at the Tony Awards, winning eight trophies Sunday night including best new musical and getting a rare win for a female director of a musical.
Playwright Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” was crowned best play.
In the four lead actor and actress categories, Bryan Cranston won his second acting Tony, but theater veterans Elaine May, Santino Fontana and Stephanie J. Block each won for the first time.
The crowd at Radio City Music Hall erupted when Ali Stroker made history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. Stroker, paralyzed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was 2, won for featured actresses in a musical for her work in a dark revival of “Oklahoma!”
Rachel Chavkin, the only woman to helm a new Broadway musical this season, won the Tony for best director of a musical for “Hadestown.”
She told the crowd she was sorry to be such a rarity on Broadway, saying, “There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many people of color who are ready to go.” A lack of strides in embracing diversity on Broadway, she said, “is not a pipeline issue” but a lack of imagination.
Broadway’s biggest night was hosted by James Corden of “The Late Late Show.”
“Hadestown” had 14 nominations going in — the most of any production this year,
