Tony Awards 2023: ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ wins best musical as awards go ahead amid the writers strike

The quirky musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” based on a David Lindsay-Abaire drama about a 16-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder giving her the appearance of a 62-year-old woman, won five Tony Awards, including the coveted Tony Award for best musical, along with best score for composer Jeanine Tesori, best book for Lindsay-Abaire, best actress for star Victoria Clark and best supporting actress for Bonnie Milligan.

The triumph for the show’s indefatigable Broadway producer David Stone, no surprise but hardly a certainty, took place at a simplified and somewhat bizarre 2023 Tony Awards ceremony that had to thread the needle between supporting a strike by the Writers Guild, thus using no scripted material, and going ahead with a ceremony regarded as essential to a still struggling Broadway’s health and well-being.

Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” an epic drama that ranges across the 20th century as it explores two Jewish families in Austria connected by marriage, and also the 85-year-old playwright’s own Jewish identity, won four Tony Awards, including for best play. But the show’s director Patrick Marber, who won the Tony for best director of a play, blew most of his acceptance speech complaining that the best-director nominees did not get close-ups during the awards broadcast.

Stoppard wasted not a word. “I’m teeming with emotions that a chatbot would not begin to understand,” said the playwright, whose first Tony win was in 1968.

Thomas Kail’s gruesome revival of “Sweeney Todd” had a less successful evening, losing the Tony for best revival of a musical to “Parade,” which had an excellent night.

“We were here 25 years ago,” said “Parade” book writer Alfred Uhry, standing beside the composer Jason Robert Brown, whose acceptance speech was played off even as the show’s scores of producers still were headed to the stage. “And, remarkably, here we are again.” Michael Arden, the director of the revival, also won a Tony but had a slur in his speech, penned in defiance of childhood bullies, bleeped out by network censors. Lea Michele, the replacement star of “Funny Girl” (a show whose box office she resuscitated) also was here again, not as a Tony winner but reprising a performance of the showstopper “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” albeit with considerably more confidence and accomplishment than the last time, which was essentially an audition.

J. Harrison Ghee, the nonbinary star of “Some Like It Hot,” won for best actor in a musical, making history in the process. Just moments before, the nonbinary Alex Newell became the first nonbinary actor ever to win a Tony for featured actor in a musical for “Shucked.”

In a competitive category, Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog” won for best revival of a play. “Theater is the great cure,” said the veteran playwright. “Thank you for acknowledging our contribution.”

Sean Hayes, who began his journey as Oscar Levant at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, won the leading actor Tony for his work in Doug Wright’s play “Good Night, Oscar.” He said, inaccurately but forgivably, that this must be the first time an Oscar had won a Tony.

The British actress Jodi Comer, star of the one-woman legal thriller “Prima Facie,” won the Tony for best actress in a play for her star performance as a London lawyer who comes to question her fundamental values.

Brandon Uranowitz won for best featured actor in a play for “Leopoldstadt.” “The only thing I have ever wanted is to repay you for the sacrifices you made for me,” he said to his parents in the audience. “But I work in the theater, so I can’t do that.”

Milligan, the winner for “Kimberly Akimbo,” said, “I made CliffsNotes because I thought I would emotionally black out,” she said, doing nothing of the sort.

The main broadcast portion of the Tony Awards, held this year at the resplendent 3,400-seat United Palace in the Uptown New York neighborhood of Washington Heights, began with host Ariana DeBose opening an empty script, prefiguring a ceremony that focused on dance and music — longtime specialties of the ceremony for sure, but usually appearing in concert with written material. Not this year, due to the strike that almost torpedoed the whole darn shebang.

“We don’t have a script, you guys,” DeBose said at the top of the show. “Darlings, buckle up.”

At one point, DeBose introduced two presenters as “whoever walks out on stage next.”

The ceremony had no teleprompters this year, DeBose pointed out, beyond a sign that said “Please wrap up,” albeit after a more generous amount of time than customary. She was, perhaps, oblivious that much of America didn’t realize that acceptance speeches and host banter were penned by writers rather that the person standing on stage. That said, writers were surely missed as the ceremony took on a less verbally polished ambience without even a narrator introducing the presenters (who had to do the job themselves for the folks at home), musical performances and other elements of the broadcast. In some ways, the winners were Broadway’s musicals, which were given the job of filling the content void and rose to the task.

The show, by no means a bust, certainly made the case for the importance of writers.

Receiving a lifetime achievement award early in the night, alongside the performer Joel Grey, the legendary composer John Kander thanked not words but music itself, saying it had “stayed my friend for my entire life and promised to stick with me until the end.”

Kander, who cowrote such shows as “Cabaret,” “Chicago” and Tony nominee “New York, New York,” certainly returned the favor.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

WINNERS OF THE 76th ANNUAL TONY AWARDS

Best musical: “Kimberly Akimbo”

Best play: “Leopoldstadt”

Leading actress in a musical: Victoria Clark, “Kimberly Akimbo”

Leading actor in a musical: J. Harrison Ghee, “Some Like It Hot”

Leading actress in a play: Jodie Comer, “Prima Facie”

Leading actor in a play: Sean Hayes, “Good Night, Oscar”

Best revival of a play: “Topdog/Underdog”

Best revival of a musical: “Parade”

Best book of a musical: “Kimberly Akimbo,” David Lindsay-Abaire

Best original score: “Kimberly Akimbo,” music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire

Featured actor in a play: Brandon Uranowitz, “Leopoldstadt”

Featured actress in a play: Miriam Silverman, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Featured actor in a musical: Alex Newell, “Shucked”

Featured actress in a musical: Bonnie Milligan, “Kimberly Akimbo”

Best direction of a play: Patrick Marber, “Leopoldstadt”

Best direction of a musical: Michael Arden, “Parade”

Best choreography: Casey Nicholaw, “Some Like It Hot”

Scenic design of a play: Tim Hatley and Andrzej Goulding, “Life of Pi”

Scenic design of a musical: Beowulf Boritt, “New York, New York”

Costume design of a play: Brigitte Reiffenstuel, “Leopoldstadt”

Costume design of a musical: Gregg Barnes, “Some Like It Hot”

Lighting design of a play: Tim Lutkin, “Life of Pi”

Lighting design of a musical: Natasha Katz, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

Sound design of a play: Carolyn Downing, “Life of Pi”

Sound design of a musical: Nevin Steinberg, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

Best orchestrations: Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter, “Some Like It Hot”

Regional Theatre Award: Pasadena Playhouse

Tony Lifetime Achievement: John Kander and Joel Grey