Tony Awards Offer Good And Possibly Bad News For Theater-Lovers

The 76th Tony Awards—recently held for the first time at the United Palace, a former vaudeville and movie house in northern Manhattan—offered both good news and possibly bad news for theater-lovers.

Ttwo nonbinary actors won awards, the first ever to do so. Alex Newell won the Tony for best featured actor in a musical for their role in Shucked, while J. Harrison Ghee won a Tony for best leading actor in a musical, for their role in Some Like It Hot.

Speaking in the press room after their win, Ghee said they felt Some Like it Hot was “an opportunity to be someone that could be a part of people’s lives in a way that they could see themselves, grow, learn, live, expand.”

They added, “This is not something I take lightly, it is something that I cherish. I’m honored, it’s a dream come true, truly.”

Also speaking in the press room after he was presented with the regional theater Tony Award was Pasadena Playhouse producing artistic director Danny Feldman.

Asked about his forecast for regional theater, Feldman said he didn’t know.

“That’s the scary moment we’re all in. We’re in a moment where there was extraordinary pandemic relief both from individual donors and from government support, but that money is done.”

Feldman said he had done some informal surveys of professional theaters across the United States, which found that “the average is that audiences are down 40% pre-pandemic—some are worse.

”On top of that, we’re seeing that most of these theaters have significant deficits next year. 100% do,” he said.

“We are really at a precipice and a real scary moment for the regional theater,” he added, warning, “The impact if these theaters start going under will be catastrophic for Broadway, for the entire ecosystem of the American theater. We’re the canary in the coal mine, so it’s more important than ever for folks to get out and support our regional theaters.”

As Feldman noted, many plays previously and currently on Broadway originated in these regional theaters.

Speaking in the press room with playwright Tom Stoppard, author of Leopoldstadt, which won four Tony Awards, including for best play, Sonia Friedman, a producer of the play, said that plays of Leopoldstadt’s scale “are under threat right now.

“I don’t know if we will see a play of this scale and breadth, in terms of the numbers of people on stage, for a while,” until the economics of Broadway change, when plays are “more accessible for audiences and are cheaper to produce—it’s very, very expensive right now.

“The model needs fixing, so I don’t know when they’ll be a play like this again. It’s very, very, very high-risk, however brilliant is is, however great the reviews are, however many people come. It’s a tough financial environment at the moment for most shows, but particularly shows that have a cast of 38,” like Leopoldstadt, she added.

“I hope I’ll be able to do it again, but I don’t know,” she concluded.