Tony Awards laud android rom-com Maybe Happy Ending and history-making Purpose

Maybe Happy Ending, a rom-com musical about androids that crackles with humanity, had a definite happy ending at Sunday's Tony Awards.

It won best new musical on a night when Kara Young made history as the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively, for Purpose, which also won best new play.

Starring Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen, Maybe Happy Ending charts the romantic relationship between two decommissioned robots, becoming a commentary on human themes and the passage of time. It won a leading six Tonys.

With Purpose, a drawing-room drama about an accomplished Black family exposing hypocrisy and pressures during a snowed-in gathering, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins caps a remarkable year.

In addition to winning back-to-back Tonys — his Appropriate won best play revival in 2024 — earned the Pulitzer Prize for Purpose. (That win came the day of the Met Gala, where he served on the host committee.)

Jacobs-Jenkins becomes the first Black playwright to win for best new play since August Wilson took home the trophy in 1987 for Fences. He urged Tony viewers to support regional theatres; Purpose was nurtured in Chicago.

Young, the first Black female actor to be nominated for a Tony Award in four consecutive years, became the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively with the featured actress in a play trophy for her work in Purpose.

Young thanked her parents, Jacobs-Jenkins, her cast and director Phylicia Rashad.

"Theatre is a sacred space that we have to honour and treasure, and it makes us united," she said.

Sunset Blvd., with Nicole Scherzinger starring as a fallen screen idol desperate to reclaim her fame, won best musical revival, handing composer Andrew Lloyd Webber his first competitive Tony since 1995 — when the original show won. The current version is a stripped-down, minimalist production.

Scherzinger also won for best lead actress in a musical, muscling aside a considerable challenge from Audra McDonald, who was gunning for her seventh statuette. It caps a remarkable career pivot for Scherzinger, once the lead singer of the pop group Pussycat Dolls and a TV talent show judge.

"Don't give up," she said. "This is a testament that love always wins."

Criss, who has starred in everything from Glee to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, won his first Tony for Maybe Happy Ending, which he also co-produced. He said he shared it with Shen, who was not nominated.

Sarah Snook took home the trophy for leading actress in a play for her tireless work in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where she plays all 26 roles.

"I don't feel alone any night that I do this show," Snook said, dismissing the idea of her play as a one-woman show. "There are so many people onstage making it work and behind the stage making it work."

Downtown cabaret star Cole Escola took home the best actor in a play trophy for playing a deranged, repressed and over-the-top ahistorical version of Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary!, beating such Hollywood stars as George Clooney and Daniel Dae Kim.

Sam Pinkleton won best director for Oh, Mary! and thanked Escola, saying he taught him, "Do what you love, not what you think people want to see."

Francis Jue won best actor in a featured role in a play for his work in a revival of Yellow Face. He said he was gifted his tuxedo from another Asian actor who wanted him to wear it to the Tonys.

"I'm only here because of the encouragement and inspiration of generations of wonderful deserving Asian artists who came before me," he said. "To those who don't feel seen," he added, "I see you."

Jak Malone won best actor in a featured role in a musical for the British import Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical, playing a woman every performance. He hoped his win could be a powerful advocacy for trans rights.

Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector's social satire about well-meaning liberals debating a school's vaccine policy, won the best play revival trophy. It made its off-Broadway debut in 2019.

The original cast of Hamilton, including creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, did a victory lap all dressed in black to mark the show's 10th anniversary on Broadway, with a medley including My Shot, The Schuyler Sisters, History Has Its Eyes on You and The Room Where It Happens.

First-time host Cynthia Erivo kicked off the show from her dressing room in Radio City Music Hall, unsure of her opening number as the stage manager urged her to get to the stage. As she made her way through the backstage warren, she ran into various people offering advice until she reached Oprah Winfrey, who advised, "The only thing you need to do is just be yourself."

Erivo then appeared at the stage in a red, spangly gown with white accents, hip cocked, as she launched into the slow-burning original song Sometimes All You Need Is a Song, written by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Initially alone with just a pianist, Erivo's soaring voice was soon joined by dozens of members of the Broadway Inspirational Voices choir, all dressed in white, making her look like a powerful strawberry in a bowl of whipped cream.

In her opening comments, she singled out first-time nominees Louis McCartney, Sadie Sink, Cole Escola and "an up-and-comer that I think you're going to really be hearing quite a bit about — George Clooney."

She noted that the 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion US, making it the highest-grossing season ever and signalling that Broadway has finally emerged from the COVID-19 blues.

"Broadway is officially back," Erivo said. "Provided we don't run out of cast members from Succession," a nod to appearances this season by former co-stars Snook and Kieran Culkin and last season by Jeremy Strong.

She and Sara Bareilles duetted for a moving in memoriam section, singing The Sun Will Come Out from Annie, and honouring its composer Charles Strouse as well as George Wendt, Richard Chamberlain, Athol Fugard, Joan Plowright, Quincy Jones, Linda Lavin, James Earl Jones and Gavin Creel.

The best book and best score awards went to Maybe Happy Ending, with lyrics written by Hue Park and music composed by Will Aronson. Its director, Michael Arden, won — Happy Pride! he said — and it also picked up best scenic design of a musical.

Justin Peck and Patricia Delgado won for choreographing Buena Vista Social Club and Peck noted a song from the renowned original album was played at their wedding. The musical takes its inspiration from Wim Wenders's 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary on the making of the Cuban album.

Harvey Fierstein, the four-time Tony winner behind Torch Song Trilogy and Kinky Boots, was honoured with a lifetime achievement Tony and became emotional during his speech.

"There is nothing quite like bathing in the applause of a curtain call, but when I bow, I bow to the audience, with gratitude, knowing that without them I might as well be lip-syncing showtunes in my bedroom mirror. And so I dedicate this award to the people in the dark."