Tony Awards 2009: full list of winners
The musical Billy Elliot was the toast of Broadway last night, winning the Tony Award for best musical and nine other awards including Best Director of a Musical and a unique best actor prize for the three young performers who share the title character role.
The show, about a North East England coal miner’s son who dreams of becoming a dancer, was the biggest hit of the season on Broadway and had been widely expected to dominate the Tonys.
Accepting the award for Best Director, Stephen Daldry said taht the prize belonged to everyone connected with the show, especially the “the great gifts of Broadway, our three little Billys”.
Calling his involvement with Billy Elliott “a long, extraordinary journey”, Mr Daldry, who also directed the oroginal film version, said: “I have been blessed in my life to spend the majority of the last ten years of my life working on the story of Billy Elliot.”
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David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish, the three rotating young stars of Billy Elliot, jointly won the award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Arriving on the stage to rapturous applause, the trio struggled to express their delight, managing only to say “wow” before thanking their families for supporting them.
The musical also received prizes for sets, lighting, sound and orchestration but Elton John, its composer, lost out to Next to Normal for best score.
The veteran actress Angela Lansbury continued Britain’s Broadway triumph, becoming only the second actress to win five Tonys.
The 83-year-old star was greeted with a standing ovation as she accepted the award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress for her role as the dotty medium Madame Arcati in a revival of No?l Coward’s Blithe Spirit.
“Who knew that this time in my life that I should be presented with this lovely, lovely award?” she said. “I feel deeply grateful.”
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Her win tied the record for acting prizes held by Julie Harris, who has five plus a special lifetime achievement award given in 2002
The Australian actor Geoffrey Rush received the prize for Best Actor for his extravagant portrait of a dying monarch in Exit the King. He said: “I want to thank Manhattan audiences for proving that French existential absurdist tragicomedy rocks.”
An emotional Liza Minnelli accepted the prize for special theatrical event for her show Liza’s at the Palace. “This is exquisite,” Minnelli said, asking for a list of people to thank because she didn’t think she was going to win.
Billy Elliot was the main attraction in a surprisingly robust Broadway season during which 43 shows opened, the highest number of new productions since 50 openings of the 1982-83 season.
It was the favourite to sweep the boards for musical awards, despite stiff competition from Next to Normal, which examines a family fractured by a mother’s mental illness, Shrek, DreamWorks’s tale of a cantankerous green ogre, and Rock of Ages, a celebration of Eighties music.
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The awards were voted on in 27 competitive categories by more than 800 members of the theatrical community, including producers, actors and journalists.
The Tonys are presented by the League of New York Theatres and the American Theatre Wing, which founded the awards in 1947.