Most of the awards are being streamed at 7 p.m. Eastern on Paramount+, followed by a 9 p.m. musical theater concert (including three big prizes) broadcast on CBS.
It’s been a long, long time since Broadway last held a Tony Awards ceremony. Tonight, after a 27-month hiatus, the event honoring Broadway’s best plays and musicals is back. There will be plenty of awards — there are 25 competitive categories this year — and lots of speeches. But the thrust of the evening is a little different: reminding viewers that Broadway has reopened after a disastrously long pandemic shutdown, and hoping that a showcase of show tunes and sentiment will persuade audiences to return. There are now 15 productions running on Broadway, and that number is growing every week, but the pandemic is not over, and tourism remains down, so the industry is looking for a boost. This year’s Tony Awards are taking place, live and in-person, at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern, and scheduled to end at 11. Most of the awards will be announced during the first two hours, at a ceremony hosted by the six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald. That segment of the evening will be viewable only on the streaming service Paramount+. The second half of the evening will consist of a concert at which stars of the theater world will perform classic and contemporary show tunes. That portion of the event, called “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!,” will be hosted by Leslie Odom Jr. (a Tony winner for “Hamilton”) and broadcast on CBS, and it will include three big awards, for best musical, best play and best play revival. Because the coronavirus pandemic is ongoing, the ceremony is restricted in many ways. The red carpet is shorter than usual. There is no official after-party. (A request for a permit to hold one on the street was rejected by the city.) And the audience watching in person will be limited — the Winter Garden holds 1,500 people, compared to 6,000 at Radio City Music Hall, where the event was often held in previous years. All of the attendees must show proof of vaccination, and they are being asked to wear masks throughout the event. The awards ceremony will honor plays and musicals that opened during a pandemic-shortened eligibility period — from April 26, 2019, to Feb.19,2020. Only 18 shows were eligible for awards — about half as many as usual — and only 15 scored nominations. The most-nominated shows are the musicals “ Jagged Little Pill,” with 15, “ Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” with 14, and “ Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” with 12, as well as “ Slave Play,” which with 12 is the most-nominated play in Tonys history. The ceremony, originally scheduled to take place in June 2020, has been repeatedly delayed and rethought; the nominations, chosen by 41 theater experts who saw every eligible show, were announced last October, and electronic voting, by 778 producers, performers and other industry insiders, took place in March. The ballots were stored by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP, which somehow has managed to keep them secret ever since. There are several unusual aspects to this season’s Tonys race. All of the nominees for best score are plays — an odd situation caused by the fact that three of the four musicals that opened before the pandemic were jukebox musicals, meaning they did not have original scores, and the fourth was shut out by nominators. In one category, best leading actor in a musical, there is only one nominee, Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” He will win if he gets a positive vote from 60 percent of those who cast ballots in that race. The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, the two organizations that present the Tony Awards, decided, in discussions with CBS, that the portion of the evening with the broadest reach — that is, on network television — would be primarily a concert.
