Some of the best parts of the 75th Annual Tony Awards were the
queer bits...here's our favorites for you to enjoy...again and again.
Whoever had the idea of having our girl Academy Award Winner Ariane DeBose host the 75th Annual Tony Awards is a total genius Her Opening Number was so brilliant and so wonderfully entertaining and this tribute to Broadway in the past allowed her to show just how very talented she really is.
Then she took advantage of the fact that Andrew Garfield not only had an aisle seat but his ‘date’ was a man …..hmmmm
There was so much love in the room for A Strange Loop. This word-of-mouth hit that started Off-Broadway : A STRANGE LOOP by a Black, queer writer about a Black, queer writer writing a musical about a Black, queer writer picked up two Awards inc BEST NEW MUSICAL
The New York Gay Men’s Chorus were there to serenade five-time Tony Award Winner Dame Angela Lansbury who was receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. Sadly the iconic British Star was unable to accept it in person, but after all, she is 96 years old just like the other grand dame HM The Queen
Then our ‘home boy’ Jesse Tyler Ferguson was nominated for the very first time only to emerge winning Best Featured Actor in A Play Award. He starred in Richard Greenbergs’ groundbreaking play Take Me Out the story of a star baseball player for the Empires, who reveals he is gay and faces a barrage of long-held unspoken prejudices. Denis O’Hare also won a Tony playing the same part in the original production in 2003. Who said being an openly gay actor would be career suicide?
The distinguished Engish openly gay actor Sir Simon Russell Beale, knighted by HM Majesty and won his first Tony on his second nomination as Best Actor in A Play for The Lehrman Trilogy
Matt Doyle was so excited when he heard his name announces as Best Featured Actor in a Musical he jumped up and kissed his boyfriend Max Clayton, who he also remembered to thank in his acceptance speech. Matt won one of the 5 Oscars that Company picked up that night, including one for every gay-man’s-musical-diva Patti Lupone. P.S. Max got his own bit of good luck the next night when Hugh Jackman caught Covid and he got to go on as his replacement in The Music Man.
There wasn’t a dry eye in our house after we watched the reunion of the original 2007 cast of Spring Awakening perform ‘TOUCH ME’. This eight-time Tony Winner about German teenagers grappling with sexual desires, secret pain and parental pressure re-ignited Broadway and amongst other things embolden Jonathan Groff one of the stars, to come out as gay
Finally, three-time Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters paid such a touching tribute to the late great Stephen Sondheim who died last year and whose legacy is some of the very best Broadway EVER
