Tonys Latest: Stars arrive eager about Broadway’s return

The Latest connected the Tony Awards (all times local):

6:35 p.m.

The reddish carpet for the Tony Awards is underway and stars are praising the instrumentality of unrecorded theater.

David Byrne, the Talking Heads frontman whose philharmonic “American Utopia” is among Sunday’s honorees, says he’s started going to shows arsenic a spectator and it’s “amazing feeling.

“The audiences are overjoyed,” Byrne says. “They’re blessed to spot the shows, but they’re blessed to conscionable spot 1 another, to beryllium successful the aforesaid country with different people. It’s truly exciting.”

Leslie Odom Jr., who became a household sanction playing Aaron Burr successful the archetypal “Hamilton” run, is hosting a peculiar tribute to Broadway that’s airing connected CBS Sunday night. He says he’s assured that radical volition admit theatre and its performers much present that the they’ve returned.

“I deliberation we’re going to instrumentality with a caller consciousness of gratitude,” Odom says.

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MORE ON THE TONYS

— Tonys: Broadway hopes to razzle-dazzle its mode retired pandemic

— Tonywatch: Aaron Tveit rides a roller coaster of a year

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

5 p.m.

“Jagged Little Pill” goes into the Tony Awards telecast connected the defensive, dogged by 2 controversies.

A erstwhile formed member, Nora Schell, a Black nonbinary histrion who made their Broadway debut successful the chorus successful 2019, posted a connection this week connected societal media describing repeated instances aboriginal successful the tally of the amusement successful which they were “intimidated, coerced, and forced by aggregate higher ups to enactment disconnected captious and indispensable country to region growths from my vagina that were making maine anemic.”

“Jagged Little Pill” producers — saying they are “deeply troubled” by the claims — person hired an autarkic researcher and the national Actors Equity Association said Sunday it was besides commissioning “a thorough, autarkic investigation” of the show’s workplace.

In different controversy, the show’s producers person apologized to fans for changing a quality from gender-nonconforming to cisgender pistillate aft the amusement moved from Boston to Broadway.

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3 a.m.

The Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Golden Globes person each held their ceremonies during the pandemic. Now it’s clip for the Tony Awards, celebrating an creation signifier that truly needs the boost — unrecorded theater.

Sunday’s amusement has been expanded from its emblematic 3 hours to four, with Audra McDonald handing retired Tonys for the archetypal 2 hours and Leslie Odom Jr. hosting a “Broadway’s Back!” solemnisation for the 2nd half, including the awarding of the apical 3 trophies — champion play revival, champion play and champion musical.

The sobering philharmonic “Jagged Little Pill,” which plumbs Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough medium to archer a communicative of an American household spiraling retired of control, goes into the nighttime with a starring 15 Tony nominations.

Nipping connected its heels is “Moulin Rouge!,” a jukebox adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive 2001 movie astir the goings-on successful a turn-of-the-century Parisian nightclub that has 14 nods.

“Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris’ ground-breaking, bracing enactment that mixes race, sex, taboo desires and class, earned a twelve nominations, making it the astir nominated play successful Tony history.