The Tony Awards: Youth is served

last updated 8 January 2015

This year’s Tonys belonged to Billy Elliot, the musical scored by Elton John, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. The show, about a working-class boy with dreams of being a ballet dancer, took 10 awards including Best Musical. In one of the ceremony’s most charming moments, the three young actors who split time in the role of Billy—David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish—awkwardly accepted their shared award for best actor in a musical. It was the first time multiple actors shared a Tony for the same role. “To all the kids out there who might want to dance, never give up, “ said Kulish, echoing the musical’s theme, as well as his own experience.

Yet two Broadway icons also received their due, said Michael Kuchwara in the Associated Press. Liza Minnelli won for Best Special Theatrical Event for her limited engagement Liza’s at the Palace. And Angela Lansbury took home her fifth Tony—and her first since 1979—for featured actress in a play, for her quirky performance in the revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit.

Despite a “large number of strong Broadway productions,” there were “no major upsets,” said Patrick Healy in The New York Times. As expected, French playwright Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, about two Brooklyn couples warring over their children’s playground deeds, won best new play honors. Director Matthew Warchus and actress Marcia Gay Harden were both honored for their part in the production. Geoffrey Rush, after winning best actor in a play for his performance in the revival of Eugène Ionesco’s Exit the King, jokingly thanked “Manhattan theater audiences for proving that French existential absurdist tragi-comedy rocks.”