Washington Heights, a north Manhattan neighborhood best known to theater lovers for being the site of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first hit show, played host to thousands in the Broadway community on Sunday night. The 76th Annual Tony Awards has moved to the United Palace Theatre, the third venue change in three years for Broadway’s biggest night. This surprised even Miranda, who excitedly high-fived people camping outside the venue on the way to the red carpet.
Arriving at the lavishly decorated auditorium (“It looks like Beyoncé’s screening room,” Nathan Lane later remarked while presenting an award along with his Producers partner Matthew Broderick), Miranda jokingly thanked everyone who came all the way got there at 176th street. “Never in my wildest dreams…” he said before presenting a lifetime achievement award to “Cabaret” composer John Kander during the Tony’s non-televised awards ceremony.
The new venue was the smallest of the big changes for the Tony Awards, which went scriptless in solidarity with the WGA strike. Nobody at the United Palace Theater seemed to miss the stale banter and boring passages that are common at awards shows. As one Tony visitor put it, “There’s no script, so there’s just going to be a lot of performances.” It’s a lot better!” And it’s true: the audience loved Ariana DeBose’s impromptu hosting duties and the many musical tracks, especially “& Juliet”, “Shucked” and “Funny Girl”.
Viewers at home were treated to meaningful speeches and stirring performances (many of which actually struggled with microphone problems in the room). But there are many that didn’t make it to airing. You didn’t see that on TV at the Tony Awards, where Kimberly Akimbo won Best Musical and cast members Alex Newell (Shucked) and J. Harrison Ghee (Some Like It Hot) made history.
Michael Arden complains about homophobic slurs and gets paged by CBS
TV viewers could hear Arden, who won Best Director for Parade, emotionally speaking about the hate he faced as a young gay man. “I’ve been called the F-word more times than I can remember,” he said. But CBS bleeped the next part of his speech, in which he retracted the homophobic slur: “Now I’m a fag with a Tony,” he said to thunderous applause and excited gasps from around the room. The show’s censors hadn’t been working at full speed since Robert De Niro took the stage to smack Trump with another F-word in 2018.
“Some like it hot,” but not like that
The Tonys organizers took the name of this year’s most-nominated show, Some Like It Hot, a little too literally. There was hardly any air conditioning in the 3,300-seat hall. Not great for New York City in June! During commercial breaks, Alex Newell fanned herself while Lea Michele provided circulation with her playbill. At 8:45 p.m., everyone in the orchestra did the same. A sweaty Newell even referenced the heat in his Best Supporting Actor speech, saying, “I’m not going to hold you all down because it’s hot in here.” Before DeBose presented the final award of the night, as a fan, she used the envelope for the best musical and loudly shouted “It’s so hot” in the front row.
It’s a mess getting in and out of the theater
Technically, the show took place on Broadway, but was over 100 blocks from the theaters that regularly host the nominated shows. Some of the growing pains associated with the new venue were so severe that it would have been believable that the Tonys would have been the first time the United Palace Theater had ever hosted a full capacity event. The mad scramble for seats (the ushers were too full to get everyone to their rows and had to hand out playbills as soon as people were seated) was matched only by the bottlenecks in exiting the theatre. But what a star-studded traffic jam! Audra McDonald, an Ohio State Murders nominee, and her husband Will Swenson, whose rendition of “Sweet Caroline” got the crowd going earlier in the night, were among the huddled masses who yearned for freedom, or at least it tried to penetrate to the exit. “That’s problematic,” Swenson whispered to his wife about the potential fire hazard.
Damn you to get a drink
During the first act, which is not broadcast live on CBS, the wait at the bar was longer than a “Hamilton” ticket line in 2015. But as the clock approached 7:15 p.m. (the main show started at 8 p.m p.m.), heralded the event and began begging people to return to their seats. They cleared the lobby so DeBose could freely scurry, jump, and twirl through the two-story venue to open the Tonys with their rousing, wordless musical number. The bar reopened after the TV start, but at 9pm (a full two hours before curtain time) the bartenders announced they were out of wine and champagne. I guess the $25 price tag for a glass of cheap bubbly didn’t hold a lot of people back.
Lots of love for how Ariana made The Thing
Maybe they sensed the challenge ahead and everyone at the United Palace Theater was clamoring for DeBose. One person even yelled “Go Ariana!” as the countdown to the show began ticking closer to zero. (And yes, the entire audience shrieked collectively as she began the opening routine by jumping off the stairs into the arms of a strong dancer.) Sara Bareilles mouthed, “Yes!” as DeBose took the stage.
“It’s not easy hosting a three-hour show,” Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin said during an extended break between acts one and two. “We have the right woman to guide us through the next three years – hours -” she corrected her Freudian slip. “Sometimes it actually feels that way.”
Mingle with people during commercial breaks
When the audience wasn’t fanning themselves, they joined the other nominees and friends throughout the four-hour evening. Miranda, who had a prime front-row seat, high-profile host Utkarsh Ambudkar, who played Aaron Burr in early readings of Hamilton and made his Broadway debut in Miranda’s other show, Freestyle Love Supreme. Later, DeBose was swarmed by producers when she said hello to Miranda between outfit changes. Julia Lester, a nominee for “Into the Woods,” used the time to make sure her dress stayed in place. See, it had so much tulle that it reached down the aisle. Ain’t No Mo playwright Jordan E. Cooper kissed Newell on the cheek as he headed toward the lobby. Ben Platt and his fiancé, Noah Galvin, were chatting and watching something on Platt’s phone (maybe this Instagram post to promote their upcoming movie, Theater Camp, which went live mid-show).
Problems with Shake Shack and Uber
As guests exited the theater and headed to the afterparty, held in a tent outside the venue, they were greeted by an even longer line – a food truck for Shake Shack burgers. (“This is the coolest event I’ve ever worked on,” said the surprisingly spry man in charge of handing out burgers to throngs of hungry talent.) Rachel Brosnahan and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney took advantage of the fluorescent lights of the truck posed for a photo. Elsewhere, newly crowned Tony winner J. Harrison Ghee walked proudly through the party with his trophy in hand. As burgers, signature cocktails and churros began to dwindle, there was one final obstacle. Wilson Cruz turned to a kind woman to help locate his Uber. It turned out that she had not worked at the event, but was also a guest. Lupita Nyong’o couldn’t find the ride of her choice either. “Okay, we’ll come to you,” she told a driver on the phone as she hurried to the other side of the United Palace Theater. Stars, they are just like us.