The heart wants what the heart wants — how else can one explain the fact that the two major winners at Sunday night’s 72nd Tony Awards, Broadway’s biggest night, are such different beasts?
True, The Band’s Visit, which won best musical (the only Tony thought to make a significant dent at the box office) and nine other prizes, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which won best play and five others, were both inspired by movies — the former is a musical take on a 2007 Israeli film, while the latter is an add-on to the blockbuster franchise of the same name — but other than that, they couldn’t be much more different.
The Band’s Visit is a low-budget show that was an off-Broadway sensation a season before conquering the Great White Way, just like the last three best musical winners, 2015’s Fun Home, 2016’s Hamilton and 2017’s Dear Evan Hansen.Potter, meanwhile, was imported from London and became the most expensive play ever mounted on Broadway.
The showing of The Band’s Visit on Sunday exceeded even its supporters’ most optimistic hopes. Indeed, the last time a show won best musical, best actor in a musical and best actress in a musical, as The Band’s Visit did with Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk, was 15 years ago when Hairspray! managed the feat. And, like Hairspray!, The Band’s Visit also snagged best featured actor in a musical, for Ari’el Stachel. The other prizes it claimed were best direction of a musical (David Cromer), best book of a musical (Itamar Moses), best original score (David Yazbek), best orchestrations (Jamshied Sharifi), best lighting design in a musical (Tyler Micoleau) and best sound design of a musical (Kai Harada).
Potter, the only best play nominee still running, was widely expected…
