The Winners Take It All!

The 62nd Annual Tony Awards, held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 15 was a particularly big night for five shows — August: Osage County, South Pacific, In the Heights, Gypsy, and Boeing-Boeing — which dominated the proceedings, taking home a grand total of 21 awards.

A veteran of numerous shows, South Pacific‘s Best Director, Bartlett Sher, said helming the first Broadway revival of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic was a particularly nerve-wracking experience. “I have never been so panicked as I was doing this show,” he noted. “Ever since I agreed to do it, all I’ve heard was how this was the greatest musical ever, or someone’s favorite musical, or how their parents went to it, and that’s been terrifying. So in the end, Andre Bishop at Lincoln Center and I felt all we could do is fail, and we tried to spend 18 months making sure it was as perfect as it can be.”

To that end, he reunited with many of his colleagues from his Tony-nominated musical, The Light in the Piazza, including co-stars Kelli O’Hara and Matthew Morrison, and designers Catherine Zuber and Michael Yeargan (both of whom won Tonys last night for their efforts). “I am not so good with new people; in fact I like to have the same conversations over and over again,” said Sher.

His one exception was brand-new star (and Tony winner) Paolo Szot as Emile DeBecque. “The part was written for an opera star, and it had to be sung by someone who could do it the way it was written. It really expands the scale of the sound,” said Sher. For his part, Szot, a Brazilian-born opera singer making his Broadway debut, was a bit overwhelmed by his win — which also occurred on his mother’s birthday. One of the biggest surprises of being in the production, he said, was that he found the audience’s familiarity with the material to be an asset. “I love that we have such wonderful contact with the audience. Sometimes, we can hear them humming or singing along, and that makes me happy. Plus, I know if I forget the words, it’s good to know someone out there will help me.”

For the cast and creative team of August: Osage County, the day was a particularly bittersweet one, since five members of the company — including Best Actress Deanna Dunagan and Best Featured Actress Rondi Reed had played their final performance that afternoon. Moreover, as was acknowledged in the press room, playwright Tracy Letts keenly felt the absence of his father Dennis Letts, who had originated the role of patriarch Beverly Weston and who had passed away in February. ” Ever since that day, my perspective changed and changed everything for all of us in a deeply human way,” he said. “It makes us not only enjoy things like awards more, but there’s also not a person among us who doesn’t recognize now what’s really important in life.”

Dunagan acknowledged that the matinee performance had been particularly emotional for her. “There were lots of tears on stage, and not always in the most appropriate places. I started crying during our big dinner scene, and since my character, viscous Violet, couldn’t wipe away the tears, I just let them roll down my face,” she said. “But obviously, this experience has been so well worth being away from everyone for the past eight months, but I need a break. I need to see my family — my mother, my son — and my Chicago friends. But I’ll be back.”

Like Dunagan, who had serious misgivings about taking the physically demanding role when it was first offered to her in Chicago by Letts, Reed almost didn’t agree to play the role of Mattie Fae. “Tracy wrote it for me and I turned it down four times,” she revealed. “I was so happy playing Madame Morrible in Wicked [a role which she is about to return to], but Tracy would not get off my back. He actually set up people everywhere to accost me. And then David Stone, our Wicked producer, told me he was going to give me a hiatus — so I finally read August. And when I did, I found I loved Mattie Fae, especially the turn the character takes at the end. I said to my agent then that I wanted to do the play, win the Tony, and go back to Wicked, but I never in my wildest dreams thought this would happen.”

Best director Anna D. Shapiro has had more to think about lately than the Tony Awards; most notably the re-casting of five actors, all of whom begin on Tuesday. “The people who are leaving are really spinal to the heart and motion of the play; they have a familial relationship not just on stage,” she says. “But as you can imagine a lot of people wanted to come in. When Estelle Parsons asked to play Violet, I asked if she would read for me, and she did. But I think the joke’s on me, since I think she really wanted to read for me to see if I wasn’t an idiot.”

The journey of In the Heights, which took home four awards including Best Musical, began at Wesleyan College eight years ago, and composer-star Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also won an individual Tony for Best Score, was determined to see his show on stage from the get-go. “When I finished the first draft in college, there was this guy I wanted to direct it, but he couldn’t do it that semester and I just couldn’t wait, so I directed it myself. I wasn’t in the show yet, I wasn’t that crazy,” he says. “But I have to say we’re only here because of our director Thomas Kail, who created deadline after deadline for me. I am a terrible procrastinator. And if I knew I would take eight years to finish that, I might have been too scared to continue.”

While Miranda was relishing in his victory — calling the evening “the best prom ever” — he hasn’t let success go to his head. “One of the great things about theater is that you’re famous for one night. Tomorrow, I’ll go have my dinner at La Caridad, and no one will know who I am.”

The show’s Tony-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler is already thinking ahead to his next two projects. “I’m doing an episode of So You Think You Can Dance in two weeks, and I think I’m choreographing “Cool” from West Side Story,” he says. “And then I start work on 9 to 5. I love the idea of moving from Lin-Manuel Miranda to Dolly Parton, and the idea of having to choreograph around 50 desks on stage is really exciting.”

Best Leading Actress in Musical winner Patti LuPone, who took home her second-ever Tony for her towering performance as Mama Rose in Gypsy, is also thinking ahead to the future. “I am with this show as long as it runs, but I already told my agents, I don’t want to leave before knowing when I’m coming back to Broadway. I’m getting older and I want to come back while my vocal cords are still supple,” she said. “I do know the Ravinia festival has asked me to do a Kurt Weill evening, and I have this concert show with Mandy Patinkin that we’re always working on.”

While television viewers might have been led to believe that LuPone had no prepared speech — she claimed she was using an old, never-used one — the actress revealed to the press that she was joking. “In the 29 years since I won my last Tony [for Evita], I’ve worked with a lot of incredible people, and I wanted to thank all of them. I actually don’t even know where the old speeches are,” she noted. “I have to say, if I had lost this award, I would’ve been disappointed, but like with the others, I would have gotten over it. But with this part, because it’s so much better than any other part in a musical, if you lose the Tony, maybe you feel like you just didn’t do a good job or people don’t like you.”

People definitely like Boyd Gaines, who earned a historic fourth Tony Award for his role as Herbie in Gypsy. “I didn’ t ever expect to win one Tony Award, never mind four,” he said. But don’t expect to find them in his apartment. “My mother has them all in her house in California. I don’t like having them around the house, you walk by them, and they whisper, ‘what have you done lately?”

Laura Benanti, who won her first Tony as Gypsy Rose Lee/Louise, said she hadn’t decided where all of her new awards would go in the apartment she shares with husband Steven Pasquale. “But I think I’m going to change my answering machine tomorrow so it says you’ve reached Tony Award winner Laura Benanti,” she said with a laugh. Benanti talked about how she identified with her character. “I am definitely more Louise than Gypsy. I was awkward as a young person and went through that journey of coming into my own. But I really have to credit our director Arthur Laurents, who is so masterful at understanding the psychology of our characters.”

Asked to choose her favorite scene in the show, Benanti paused briefly: “I have to say I love the scene at the end where I get to scream at Patti, because it changes and morphs every single night,” she notes. “And I love doing “Together [Wherever We Go] with Boyd and Patti, because we got to have so much fun.”

Boeing-Boeing‘s win as Best Revival of a Play — besting fellow British import Macbeth — was a thrill for its lead producer, Sonia Friedman. “I think right now people find the show both nostalgic and romantic, which maybe they didn’t back in the 1960s,” she said of the show’s success. “And our director Matthew Warchus was absolutely inspired in resetting in with Americans and re-casting American actors. We never even thought of importing the British cast. But bringing over Mark Rylance was simply non-negotiable.”

As for Rylance, who took home the Best Actor in a Play trophy for his hilarious performance as the initially hapless Robert, he admitted he was surprised to be standing in the winner’s circle. “Everyone in my category are such good actors, and although I didn’t see everyone’s work, what I did see was really stunning,” he said. “I don’t put myself in the world of being the best, although it’s nice to get this kind of notoriety at age 48, instead of age 22. But the most important thing is that I’ve always liked to do a lot of diverse parts and hopefully, I’ll keep doing that.”

For TheaterMania’s photo feature on the Tony Awards, click here.

For the full list of Tony Award winners and nominees, click here.