The 21st annual Easter Bonnet competition, held for two performances on Monday and Tuesday, April 23 and 24, raised $3,345,997 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The show got off to a great start with a roof-raising opening number written by [title of show]‘s Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell. Here’s Bell happily surrounded by a bevy of Broadway hunks, among them Barrett Foa and Cheyenne Jackson.
Also featured in the opening number were a clutch of lovely ladies, including vocal soloist Carla Hargrove (center) from the cast of Hairspray.
Here’s Edward Hibbert (Curtains) in one of the competition’s most fabulous creations.
Barbara Walsh (far left, in bonnet) and the cast of Company imagined what it would be like to audition for a production of A Chorus Line directed by John Doyle.
JoAnne Worley (center) and company presented The Drowsy Chaperone‘s bonnet.
Anne Runolfsson (The Phantom of the Opera) and Tess Adams (Les Misérables) stopped the show with a mother/daughter version of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda (center) and the company of the Off-Broadway smash In the Heights did their own take on Fiddler on the Roof…
…while the women of The Color Purple sang a medley of Stephen Sondheim songs…
…and the company of Hairspray, inspired by The King and I, presented “Small House of Edna Turnblad.”
As usual, the company of The Lion King made an extraordinarily beautiful presentation.
The men of Journey’s End decided that putting some skin into their show might help improve business at the box office.
The Phantom of the Opera saluted veteran actor/singer George Lee Andrews, who has been with the show since it opened 18 years ago.
Beauty and the Beast made its last Easter Bonnet appearance. (The long-running Disney hit will close on July 29.)
Company star Raúl Esparza brought the show to a thrilling climax with his gorgeous rendition of the unofficial Easter Bonnet anthem, David Friedman’s “Help Is on the Way.”
Vanessa Redgrave (The Year of Magical Thinking) and David Hyde Pierce (Curtains) took the stage to announce the winners and runners-up in the presentation and fund-raising categories. Journey’s End took the former prize, while the national tour of Jersey Boys took the latter — the first time in Easter Bonnet history that a touring show raised the most money for BC/EFA.
