Six of the most important wins at this year’s Tony Awards, presented last night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, were British: the Best Play nod to Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, the two awards for direction of play and musical respectively (Nick Hytner for The History Boys as well as John Doyle for Sweeney Todd), and three of the four awards for acting in plays: The History Boys earning nods for Best Actor for Richard Griffiths and for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Frances de la Tour, plus Ian McDiarmid winning for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Faith Healer. Other British winners included History Boys set and lighting designers Bob Crowley and Mark Henderson and Sweeney Todd orchestrator Sarah Travis. That’s a total tally of nine awards (out of 24) that went to British shows and personnel, whose influence on Broadway is pervasive as well as persuavive, even in categories now like orchestrations that we don’t often make a mark in, and (in a coals-to-Newcastle move) directing a revival of an American-originated musical like Sweeney Todd.
No wonder that American Actors’ Equity is still so strenuously opposed to British incursions: not only does the British presence potentially deny their own members jobs, we also too often steal their glory. The History Boys, imported lock, stock and barrel, may have afforded some American backstage jobs and understudy postings, but otherwise has been entirely a bank raid, in every sense, on Broadway — stealing serious thunder (and potential audiences) from homegrown product like Well. The indigenous play on Broadway has long been an endangered species, and this year just one (Rabbit Hole) of the four plays nominated for Best Play originated there — the other three were all first seen in London (in addition to The History Boys, they were Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Conor McPherson’s Shining City).
Still, the Broadway musical held sway at least as an authentically Broadway product this year, with Jersey Boys going head-to-head with The Drowsy Chaperone and sharing the spoils between them — Jersey Boys taking Best Musical, and Drowsy taking the Tony’s for Best Score and Book.
If you want to know about the play - someone has posted a review of the preview on the forum attached to the The Play's The Thing web site, on the C4 web site.
You will find it under 'spoilers'
The above should have posted under 'The Play's The Thing'
Doh!