Ready for your Tony Award, Miss Close.
As expected, "Sunset Boulevard" dominated the 1995 Tonys, winning seven prizes, including best Broadway musical and a top acting honor for its star, Glenn Close."Love! Valour! Compassion!" by Terrence McNally was chosen best play, the third year in a row a homosexual-themed play took top honors.
Matthew Broderick, who had to take singing and dancing lessons for his role as an ambitious window washer in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," won as best actor in a musical.
Ralph Fiennes, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Schindler's List," won the Tony as best actor in a play, for his "Hamlet."
"The Heiress," a stage adaptation of the Henry James novel "Washington Square," took home four awards.
Cherry Jones who plays the cruelly deceived title character was named best actress in a play. "This is a spring I shall never forget," she exulted as she picked up the prize.
Frances Sternhagen, a veteran character performer who plays a flighty, fidgety aunt, was chosen best featured, or supporting, actress. Gerald Gutierrez won as best director for "The Heiress" and the play won in the best revival category.
The 1927 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical, "Show Boat," won five Tony Awards, for best revival of a musical; best direction, Harold Prince; best featured actress, Gretha Boston as Queenie; best costume design, Florence Klotz; best choreography, Susan Stroman.
"Here's to life on the wicked stage," said Stroman, quoting a song in "Show Boat."
The Tony Awards were presented in the Minskoff Theater, against Norma Desmond's lavish living room for "Sunset Boulevard."
The musical received Tony Awards in two categories where it had no competition, score of a musical for composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricists Don Black and Christopher Hampton, and book of a musical, for Black and Hampton, who adapted the famous Billy Wilder film.
Other Tonys for "Sunset Boulevard" were won by George Hearn, best featured actor in a musical; John Napier, scenery, and Andrew Bridge, lighting.
Hearn, who shaves his head to play a butler, gave "special thanks to the hair department."
John Glover, who plays twins in "Love! Valour! Compassion!," the story of eight gay men over one summer, won the Tony as best featured actor in a play.
Nathan Lane, a host along with dancer Gregory Hines and Close, perked up the show with a comic edge to his lines and three costume changes.
Once, he appeared in the wraparound bib apron he wears in "Love! Valour! Compassion!" In the play, it's obvious when he turns around that he is wearing nothing else. On Tony night, he didn't turn around.
He made a running joke of not being nominated for a Tony. After CBS-TV cut off the show, playwright McNally made his acceptance speech and Lane entered carrying a Tony Award. "I found it in an empty box," he said, and put it inside his tuxedo jacket.
The awards celebrated a sparse Broadway season, with only 28 productions opened on Broadway during the 1994-95 season, and half were old plays and musicals. Thirty-seven shows arrived the previous year.
Despite the drop in activity, Broadway attendance climbed to its highest level in 12 years, reaching 9.3 million compared with 8.1 million the previous year. Ticket sales also surged, reaching a record $406 million, up from $356 million the year before.
Special Tony Awards for lifetime achievement went to Carol Channing, who is touring in "Hello, Dolly!," and Harvey Sabinson, retiring as executive director of the League of American Theaters and Producers after 50 years in the theater. A Tony Honor was given to the National Endowment for the Arts and accepted by its chairman, actress Jane Alexander.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
CROSSROADS
More on the Tonys is available online. Search for document XTONYLIST.