The
73rd Annual Tony Awards will be held on June 9, 2019, to recognize achievement in Broadway production during the 2018-19 season. The ceremony will be held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and will be broadcast live by CBS. James Corden will serve as host. Although I'm interested in the nominees in all the categories, I have a special affinity for the "Best Revival" category. I enjoy revisiting the classics/oldies and I always reread the play before a night at the theater!
Check out copies of the five nominated plays and two musicals:
Best Revival of a Play
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
This play is set during the second world war, and is about a successful businessman, Joe Keller, who has failed to fulfill his social obligations and has failed to recognize the role of society after he is blinded by lust for money during the war.
Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley
This play revolves around a group of gay men who gather for a birthday party in New York City and was groundbreaking for its portrayal of gay life. The play has been called "A true theatrical game-changer,
The Boys in the Band helped spark a revolution by putting gay men's lives onstage — unapologetically and without judgment — in a world that was not yet willing to fully accept them."
Burn This by Lanford Wilson
The play begins shortly after the funeral of Robbie, a young, gay dancer who drowned in a boating accident with his lover Dom. In attendance were Robbie's roommates: his sensitive dance partner and choreographer, Anna, and confident, gay ad man Larry. Soon joining them in Robbie's lower Manhattan loft are screenwriter Burton (Anna's longtime lover) and Pale (Robbie's cocaine snorting, hyperactive restaurant manager brother). In the face of their shared tragedy, the quartet attempts to make sense of their lives and reconsider their own identities and relationships. Anna learns to be independent and self-confident. She begins to pursue her interest in choreography and begins a relationship with Pale, ending her dispassionate relationship with her longtime boyfriend.
Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein
This is a collection of three plays rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a Jewish homosexual, drag queen, and torch singer who lives in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The four-hour play begins with a soliloquy in which he explains his cynical disillusionment with love.
The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan
Gladys Green owns a small art gallery in Greenwich Village. She is in her 80s and showing signs of Alzheimer's disease. Don, a young artist, arrives for a showing of his work. The landlord wants to close the art gallery and replace it with a restaurant. How her family – daughter Ellen, son-in-law Howard and grandson Daniel – deals with her decline is told by the grandson.
Best Revival of a Musical
Kiss Me, Kate
The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend, Bill, who runs afoul of some gangsters.
Oklahoma!
Set in the Oklahoma territory in the early 1900s, this musical tells the story of two pairs of lovers. Curly is a cowboy who has trouble admitting his feelings to Laurey, as she does to him, because of their stubbornness. Judd, the hired hand at Laurey's farm, tries to come between them.
Semiosis by Sue Burke
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
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