It was the 72nd Tony Awards on CBS, and the top winner was The Band Visit, it is based on an Israeli film about an Egyptian band stranded in a hardscrabble Negev town.
Ari’el Stachel, the California-born son of an Israeli-Yemeni father and an Ashkenazi mother from New York, won the award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance as a romantic Egyptian trumpeter in the musical.
“Both my parents are here tonight. I have avoided so many events with them because for so many years of my life I pretended I was not a Middle Eastern person,” he said. “And after 9/11 it was very, very difficult for me and so I concealed, and I missed so many special events with them. And they’re looking at me right now, and I can’t believe it,” said the Tony Award winner Ari’el Stachel.
Tony Shalhoub (“Monk”) won for Best Actor in a Musical and Katrina Lenk for Best Actress in a Musical for their roles as, respectively, the leader of the band and the Israeli cafe owner who takes him in.
“The Band’s Visit” also won awards for Best Book (by Itamar Moses), Best Direction of a Musical, Best Original Score (by David Yazbek), Best Lighting Design, Best Orchestration and Best Sound Design.
Andrew Garfield took home Leading Actor in a Play for Angels in America, and he was nominated for an Oscar for Hacksaw Ridge in 2017.
Tina Fey, introducing her new musical Mean Girls, that was interesting to see. Mean Girls 1, Mean Girl’s Tony performance
Robert De Niro introduces Bruce Springsteen before he did that he said “f—k Trump” and people gave him a standing ovation.
How many times do we have to say this, don’t bring politics into awards show? Most of the other contestants, grab their awards, gave inspiring speeches and thanked their family and their agents who helped them succeed. They should ban certain actors to the awards show. We want to see our favorites win. Maybe Robert DeNiro wants better film roles. Thank you, CBS for muting Robert De Niro, f-bomb message, very quickly, and we did not hear it on our TV. Broadway is about entertainment and escapes as Groban and Bareilles sang in their opening number, “In a world that is scary and hard to endure, if you make art at all you’re a part of the cure” — and this year’s Tonys delivered both, in restorative.
Here are the other winners