Orlando:
The 70th Tony Awards dedicated the ceremony to the victims of the
Orlando shooting that took place in a gay nightclub in Orlando.
The
hip-hop musical Hamilton
unsurprisingly dominated this year’s Tony Awards where host James Corden paid
tribute to the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. The
critically-acclaimed Broadway production, which tells the story of Alexander
Hamilton, one of America's founding fathers, won 11 awards including best
musical after receiving a record 16 nominations.
Briton Cynthia Erivo won best performance
by a lead actress in a musical for her role as Celie Harris in The Color Purple. Fighting back tears on
stage, she said: “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry because my make-up artist
would be really mad at me. “Thank you American Theatre Wing for making a London
girl very, very happy,” she added.
Corden
opened the show with a message which said: “Our hearts go out to all of those
affected by this atrocity.” “All we can say is you're not on your own right
now. Your tragedy is our tragedy,” he said. “Hate will never win. Together we
have to make sure of that. Tonight's show stands as a symbol and a celebration
of that principle’” he further added.
The
attack prompted the cast of Hamilton
to drop their Revolutionary War muskets for their performance at the awards, a
spokesman for the musical said.
Speaking
before the ceremony in New York, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and creator of
Hamilton, said the shooting was “heavy in my heart and heavy in my mind”.
Veteran
American actor Frank Langella, who won best performance by a lead actor in a
play for his role in The Father, urged Orlando to be “strong” in the wake of
the atrocity. “When something bad happens we have three choices,” he said. “We
let it define us, we let it destroy us, or we let it strengthen us,” he said. “Today
in Orlando we had a hideous dose of reality,” he said. “I urge you Orlando to
be strong because I’m standing in a room full of the most generous human beings
on earth and we will be with you every step of the way,” he added.
Jessica
Lange won the award for best performance by a lead actress in a play for her
role as morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in Long
Day’s Journey Into Night. “This is a dream come true,” she said. “It fills
me with such happiness even on such a sad day as this.”
Hamilton,
which is expected to open at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre in October 2017,
has achieved rave reviews and sell-out performances since making its debut in
February last year. However, it failed to beat the record 12 awards won by The Producers in 2001.
Corden, who won a 2012 Tony Award for his
performance in One Man, Two Guvnors,
hosted the 70th Tony Awards following his successful stint as the presenter of The Late, Late Show in America.
The
ceremony also featured Barbra Streisand, who took to the Tony Awards stage for
the first time in 46 years to hand out the best musical award.
The
awards were dedicated to the victims of the massacre at a gay nightclub in
Orlando which left at least 50 people dead and another 53 in hospital. The
attack is the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the 9/11
attacks of 2001. The attack is also the deadliest mass shooting in United
States history and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people
in US history.
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