LuPone-a-palooza!

Patti Lupone
Patti LuPone is performing her latest cabaret act, Far Away Places, at Live at the Rrazz in San Francisco. Photos by Rahav Iggy Segev/photopass.com

Need your Patti LuPone fix? You’ve come to the right place.

We have for you an interview with Ms. LuPone in connection with the San Francisco debut of her latest cabaret show, Far Away Places, at the newly configured Live at the Rrazz performance space in the Cadillac Building.

Here’s a sample of the interview in the San Francisco Chronicle:

But don’t expect LuPone back on Broadway anytime soon. She’s a little bitter about the Great White Way at the moment, having just come off two flop shows, the musical version of “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and David Mamet’s most recent play, “The Anarchist,” opposite Debra Winger.

“I’m mightily depressed about the state of our art,” LuPone says of the commercial theater. “I’ve been in this business a long time, but I’m still so naive. I’ve always trusted producers, but Wall Street has taken over, and they don’t know what the f- they’re doing. I wish they’d go buy baseball teams and leave us alone. These money people are destroying Broadway. They throw money at a show, then abandon it, and they’re messing with the economy of the people who rely on this profession. This isn’t a game for us.”

Read the entire interview here.

Patti Lupone

We also have a review of Far Away Places from the San Francisco Chronicle.

But LuPone’s sweet spot is the combination of aggression and endearing sincerity she displays on the muscular and melodic Brecht-Weill “Bilbao Song” and Sondheim’s daffy “By the Sea” from “Sweeney Todd,” a show she performed with the San Francisco Symphony and in a Broadway revival.

Then there’s the full-on drama of the Brecht-Weill “Pirate Jenny,” an angry aria that runs with blood and ferocity. When she finishes the number, eyes blazing, you want to hand her a straitjacket and a third Tony Award.

Read the review here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Patti LuPone’s Far Away Places continues through Sunday, March 24 at Live at the Rrazz, 1000 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $60-$75, plus a two-drink minimum. Call 800-380-3095 or visit www.liveattherrazz.com.

From stage to screen, in comes Company

Company cast photo

Bobby baby bobby bubbe: The starry cast of the New York Philharmonic’s Company, which hits movie screens across the nation. Photo courtesy of the New York Philharmonic. Below: Tony Award-winner Anika Noni Rose (portrait) and Rose (far left), Christina Hendricks and Chryssie Whitehead perform “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.”

 

After performing on the Tony Awards last Sunday with her fellow Company cast members, Anika Noni Rose, all glammed out in a gorgeous white gown, devoured a giant plate of nachos.

The Tony Award-winning actor laughs at the thought of herself devouring the late-night snack in all her red-carpet glory. “There I was grubbing on nachos. They were delicious.” And how do we know that Rose enjoyed the snack? She posted a photo of the meal on her Twitter feed (@AnikaNoniRose).

Anika Noni Rose

Rose, 38, is having a good week. The American Conservatory Theater-trained actor enjoyed the Tony Awards ceremony – one of the best I’ve seen in years” – because, as she puts it, “I was there to have fun, put on some pretty clothes and root for my friends. You see people you don’t get to see very often, and you meet some fantastic people. I met (best actor winner) Mark Rylance, who is just amazing. God took amazing and put skin on it. That’s Mark Rylance. I met(best actress nominee) Patina Miller and got to hang out with (best actress winner) Sutton Foster, who I’ve known for years but never get to see. I’m an investor in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but that was the first time I got to meet Daniel Radcliffe, who could not be lovelier. And he’s so good in the show.”

And that was just Sunday night.

The rest of the week, Rose will be making a splash across the country. She’s part of a starry cast that the New York Philharmonic pulled together for three concerts Stephen Sondheim’s Company presented last April but forever preserved in an HD broadcast to be screened in movie theaters from coast to coast.

The first screenings start Tuesday, June 15. At San Francisco’s Embarcadero Cinema, for instance, it screens June 15, 16 and 19, but there are also screenings in Cupertino, Rohnert Park, Napa, Pleasant Hill, Mill Valley, Sausalito, Walnut Creek, San Rafael, San Jose, Hayward and many more. As you can see, this Company is inviting lots of company.

Rose plays Marta, one of the many girlfriends of the main character, Bobby (played by stellar Tony host Neil Patrick Harris. Her big number is “Another Hundred People,” and in a tiny bit of delicious irony, the woman who debuted the song in the original 1971 Broadway production, Pamela Myers, is now on stage at Rose’s old stomping grounds as an ensemble member in ACT’s Tales of the City (and she’s wonderful).

Company 2

This is only the second time Rose, a 2004 Tony winner for best featured actress in Caroline, or Change, has performed Sondheim on stage (the first was a tune from Sunday in the Park with George at a tribute to George C. Wolfe), and she says, learning the ins and outs of Sondheim is “no walk in the park,” especially when, like the Company cast, you have a week and two days of rehearsal.

“Being in this show was like being shot out of a cannon,” Rose says on the phone from New York. “It ended up being a spectacular experience because, to a one, we were surrounded by brilliant, caring, lovely, fun, funny, smart professionals. No one brought nasty behavior, no one brought an ego to rehearsal. It was fantastic to be with each other.”

No egos? That’s impressive, especially given the pedigree of a cast that includes current “it” boy Harris (who was filming his sitcom, How I Met Your Mother in LA), Tony-winning diva Patti LuPone, TV’s favorite fake pundit Stephen Colbert, Mad Men vamp Christina Hendricks and Tony-winner Katie Finneran (from last season’s revival of Promises, Promises).

Because the busy actors were busy acting in all their various projects, rehearsals were … interesting. Not everybody was actually in the same room until dress rehearsal, which happened to be two hours before the opening-night performance. But director Lonny Price hired musical theater students to stand in and learn the parts for the benefit of the principal actors who were able to show up.

Rose says the pressure was on, and what could have been a disaster was a triumph. “It clicked because it had to,” she says. “Thank God for training and professionalism and dedication. It made for a pretty wrinkle-free production.”

She was far from embarrassed. The show opened on a Thursday and repeated Friday and twice on Saturday. “By Saturday night,” Rose says, we were brilliant.”

Rose was involved in a previous live broadcast into movie theaters, only that one was truly live from Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Rose was Juliet to Orlando Bloom’s Romeo in a Los Angeles Philharmonic evening of Tchaikovsky music.

“I think these broadcasts are wonderful,” she says. “They allow people access who wouldn’t otherwise get to see these things. And people can’t always afford a ticket to a show, never mind a ticket to the city, a hotel room, food, car rental. If you’re a family, it’s not even just you anymore. They also welcome people to an art form who might not think it’s for them, then they see it actually is for them and want to see the live thing. It’s a welcome mat to our art form, especially for people who might never have seen a live performance before. They see what it is we do, makes it familiar to them. It’s not so scary, not really stepping out of their realm.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Find a Company screening at a theater near you. Click here.

Here’s the trailer

Patti LuPone: From Les Mouches to Madame Rose

Broadway diva Patti LuPone releases a new old CD today: Patti LuPone at Les Mouches (Ghostlight/Sh-K-Boom records). The disc is new, but the performance captured on it is from a New York nightclub 28 years ago. Every Saturday night, for 27 weeks, LuPone would dash from the Broadway Theatre after her final performance of Evita for the week and perform, with David Lewis at the piano, for a packed nightclub audience.

To read all about LuPone’s cabaret heyday and the release of the new disc, visit my theater page at Examiner.com here.

While LuPone was on the phone it was impossible not to talk to her about her Tony-winning turn as Madame Rose in the hit Broadway revival of Gyspy.

On her Gypsy company, which includes Tony winners Boyd Gaines as Herbie and Laura Benanti as Louise as well as Leigh Ann Larkin as June:

“This is the best company I’ve ever worked with on stage, the best experience on stage. It’s a joyful, deeply rewarding experience. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and this is a hard part that does nothing but renew me night after night.”

LuPone says she’ll be with the show through March 1. What about a tour?

“I would consider touring, but I don’t think it will happen. The producers say the road is `broken,’ which is to say the presenters cannot meet the guarantee of the production. I would love to come to San Francisco, L.A., Boston, Atlanta, wherever, with this show and this company. But I don’t think, considering the economic times we’re in, that it will happen. We’re not going to London because there’s not theater for it. It’s not the end of Gypsy, but there may be a long hiatus.”

The role of Rose is considered the apex of musical theater roles for women. This is the second time LuPone has taken on a role originated by Ethel Merman (the other was Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes). The current production is directed by Arthur Laurents, who wrote the show’s book, and LuPone has great praise for her director.

“This is the best script ever written for Broadway. Take the music out, you have a play. With the character of Rose I’m still connecting the dots. Bubbles have burst, and I’ve been able to connect dots from the first to second act. I have two unbelievably good actors, Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti, and we continue to investigate with each other. That’s why I’m so happy. It’s the purest kind of experience one can have if you dare to act on a stage. In this particular case, Laura and I, especially in the final moments of the play, break it open. We make it different every night. The interpretation changes.”

LuPone will be 60 next year, and at about the six-month mark in Gyspy, she hit a sort of wall and wondered if she was going to make it to the end of this musical marathon. So she went to a nutritionist.

“I cut out wheat and coffee. I have more energy and stamina. I already have stamina – I was built for the stage. But I don’t want to miss shows, so that’s why I went for help. My instinct said go, make sure you can finish this run, make sure you’re not knocked out of the part. I also get about 12 hours of vocal silence, and I have a great singing teacher. This show taught me how to breathe. It’s all about breath. Every show is about breath, every singing role is about breath. But we walk on stage and forget the breathing. We’re shallow breathers and have to consciously drop breath into the belly and float breath on the voice. Technique and breath, vocal silence and breath – that’s how I persevere.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Visit http://www.sh-k-boom.com/#solo or www.pattilupone.net

Click here to see a YouTube video of LuPone at Les Mouches singing “Meadowlark.”
And here is LuPone at Les Mouches singing “Rainbow High” from Evita:

A Broadway blast: `South Pacific,’ `Gypsy,’ `In the Heights’

A quick Labor Day trip to New York allowed me a little long overdue catching up on some Broadway shows.

I had three slots available, and I filled them all with musicals. Yes, I could have seen August: Osage County and any number of plays. Yes, I could have seen my dearly beloved [title of show], which apparently could use every audience member it could get.

But I went for the big ticket items, and I’m so glad I did. Here are some thoughts on my trio of musical theater delights.

SOUTH PACIFIC

Just how director Bartlett Sher turned this 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein relic into such a beautiful, vital piece of theater is somewhat miraculous. The show everyone said was dated and impossible to revive in our politically correct world is now the most moving, involving and astonishing musical on Broadway.

I’ve always loved the score of South Pacific – nearly every song is a hit – but I’ve never much liked the show (and the movie bored me from an early age). Until now. Sher made the wise decision to make the orchestra (and, consequently Rodgers’ music) a star of the show, and that puts a whole new emphasis on the evening. During the overture, when the melodies really rev up, the stage of the Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont slowly rolls back to reveal the formally dressed members of the 30-piece orchestra. It’s a thrilling moment – the first of many.

Strangely, this South Pacific doesn’t feel like a musical. It feels like a contained world that resembles our own but exists in a heightened dimension where communication is not complete without a lush orchestra to underscore the emotion. The performers, from the brilliant Kelli O’Hara as Nellie Forbush to Paulo Szot as Emile de Becque, are grounded and natural in this alternate universe, and everything they do resonates with emotional truth and power.

So when Szot ends Act 1 with a reprise of “Some Enchanted Evening,” and that amazing stage comes into play again, it’s like a rush of heartbreak that pulses right through you.

Conversely, when O’Hara gushes through “Wonderful Guy,” you believe every word, and the same is true of Matthew Morrison as Lt. Joe Cable when he sings “Younger Than Springtime” and, more importantly, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

Some have chastised South Pacific for preaching on the topic of racial intolerance, but that’s exactly what gives the show its emotional heft. When Nellie discovers just how powerful her prejudice is, we’re as disappointed in her as she is in herself. She’s desperate for change and to find her place in the world, but when she faces real change and has a chance to inhabit someplace as far away from Little Rock, Arkansas, she can’t simply rely on her charm, smile and giggle as a defense. She has to discover who she truly is, and she does in the most moving way possible.

Prior to this production, I had never really felt the weight of South Pacific or so strongly felt the tension of war that underscores everything, even the most buoyant numbers such as “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” and “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.”

I used to think I had a favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein show (Carousel). Then I saw The King and I and had to re-think. Now it’s all about South Pacific and probably will be for a good long time. We’re a country at war, and we’re in the midst of a presidential race involving our first African-American candidate. How extraordinary that Rodgers and Hammerstein still have something to reveal about our world.

 

GYPSY

Everything you’ve heard about the Patti LuPone Gypsy is true. And it’s even better than that.

I should correct myself. This is the Arthur Laurents
Gypsy. In his early 90s, the book writer of Gypsy, considered by many to be the pinnacle of American musical theater, has reconfigured his masterwork yet again. As the director of this production, he has balanced the weights and come up with a show that is as good a play as it is a musical.

Sure LuPone is great – truly great – but she doesn’t overwhelm. Her Rose is spry, sexy and endearing. She’s not a steamroller, nor is she a nightmare. We like this quick-thinking woman for her spirit if not for her borderline abusive parenting methods. She’s fame damaged not because she’s famous but because she’s not and that’s what she most wants in the world. She uses her daughters and the men in her life to scramble for fame, but to no effect.

Her frustration, anger and utter self-involvement kills every relationship, and that pain infuses every confrontation she has, especially with Boyd Gaines as Herbie, her love interest and the manager of her terrible kiddie act, and with Laura Benanti as the grown-up Louise (aka Gypsy Rose Lee). These scenes are every bit as powerful as the musical numbers, and it’s easy to see why all three leads won Tony Awards this year.

I’d also like to make a case for Leigh Ann Larkin as June, a young woman trapped in the guise of the 10-year-old star of Rose’s act. During her duet with Benanti on “If Momma Was Married,” Larkin exudes a combination of bitterness and cynicism beyond her years along with a snottiness borne of Rose’s constant exhortations that June is a STAR.

One of the reasons Gypsy is held in such high estimation is “Rose’s Turn,” the most incredible number for an actress in musical theater. With her daughter now a world-famous stripper, Rose is left to wonder what her life has amounted to, and she has a nervous breakdown in the form of a musical fantasy. She sings her song, and at the end, the audience I saw it with (a lively Friday night bunch), flew into a boisterous ovation, standing and stomping, whistling and shouting. LuPone’s Rose curtsied and bowed, blew kisses and drank in the hosannas. It’s a perfect dramatic moment in which the audience becomes a character in the show: the adoring throng Rose has always dreamed of but will never know.

As the ovation quiets down, LuPone’s Rose keeps bowing and waving, and the effect is heartbreaking.

Gypsy is a juicy musical play, the kind that wouldn’t have been possible without Rodgers and Hammerstein tackling serious issues in their popular musicals. This is a musical that gets it all right, and we’ve had a hard time matching it, which is probably why it has returned to Broadway so many times.

 

IN THE HEIGHTS

There’s a direct line from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award winner for best musical. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more sentimental (in the good way) or someone more convinced of the inherent goodness of humankind than Oscar Hammerstein, and Miranda is definitely of the Hammerstein school.

In the Heights is exuberant, passionate and big hearted. It’s a show about rough, tough lives told in sweet, colorful ways.

Miranda’s music and lyrics bring the sounds of the barrio into a pop-Broadway fusion that is highly appealing. He gives us throaty ballads and lively group numbers (further enlivened by Andy Blankenbuehler’s dynamic choreography) that effectively connect show tune romance and longing with contemporary sounds. There’s a little bit of Rent in there, but Miranda’s score makes its own distinctive mark.

Quiara Alegria Hudes’ book is slightly less successful if only because it seems familiar and more romantic than realistic. We’ve got three primary stories: a young woman (Mandy Gonzalez as Nina) drops out of Stanford and returns to Washington Heights because working two jobs interfered with her studies and she lost her scholarship; another young woman (Karen Olivo as Vanessa) can’t find a place to live because she doesn’t make enough money working at the local hair salon; and a bright young man (Miranda as Usnavi) inherited his parents’ bodega and, in addition to taking care of Abuela Claudia (Olga Merediz), he keeps his eye on the neighborhood and tells everybody’s stories.

There’s life, death and a blackout, some sizzling salsa moves, a little rap, a winning lottery ticket and a whole lot of good folks struggling, banding together and achieving triumph in big and little ways.

Love stories abound as Nina falls for local boy Benny (Christopher Jackson), Usnavi works up the nerve to ask out Vanessa and longtime married couple Kevin (Eliseo Roman) and Camila (Priscilla Lopez of A Chorus Line fame) find themselves at a crossroads when their daughter’s troubles force a major business decision.

Under the direction of Thomas Kail, In the Heights is a highly enjoyable multi-pronged story told with flair and affection. There’s nothing terribly innovative about this musical, but the culture it chooses to explore and the people on whom it trains its focus aren’t all that common on Broadway, so it’s all the more welcome.

 

 

 

Helping Broadway musicals go (sh-k-) Boom!

Kurt Deutsch didn’t mean to get into the record business.

The self-described “total theater guy” grew up in St. Louis going to theater whenever possible (usually at The Muny) and then studied directing and acting in college. His big break came when Evan Handler had to leave the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound for health reasons (he was diagnosed with leukemia, survived, wrote a fantastic book about it, Time on Fire, and went on to star in, among other things, Sex and the City, so there’s a happy ending here).

Deutsch replaced Handler and did the show for a year and half, and then went on to Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men.

After he moved to Los Angeles, Deutsch met the woman who would become his wife, actress Sherie Rene Scott, while working on Randy Newman’s musical Faust. The show didn’t go anywhere, but the relationship did.

When Scott was getting ready to do Disney’s Aida on Broadway, she was offered a record contract – every performer’s dream, right? – and Deutsch looked it over.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” he says during a phone interview. “I thought we should just do it ourselves, and one thing led to another. I had no intention of doing cast albums or any of the stuff we ended up doing. I was just going to do a record with my wife.”

That was eight years ago, and Sh-K-Boom records, co-founded by Scott (the Sh) and Deutsch (the K), has become a major force in the realm of Broadway music. Originally the label started as an outlet for Broadway performers to show their musical colors outside of cast albums. Scott, along with the likes of Adam Pascal of Rent and Alice Ripley of Side Show, released pop-rock, singer-songwriter albums.

Then original cast albums began to creep into the picture as Deutsch began to learn more about the music industry, recording contracts and business models.

“The usual recording contracts are awful,” Deutsch says. “The record company pays for the record, but then the artist never makes any money off the record. The same kind of contract is given to shows. The royalty deal is horrible because you have to sell so many records to see any money off of it. I thought it was so unfair. I couldn’t believe producers would sign these things. I realized cast albums could be an asset and make money, theoretically. Producers spend all this money creating the shows, why wouldn’t they want to create their own cast album? So we created a different model for producers to share in the revenue from cast albums in an equitable way.”

The music industry is an industry in turmoil. Technology has wreaked havoc with traditional means of recording and distribution – thank you, iTunes. Deutsch has had to be creative and to develop a mission.

“When I go see the shows, there are two aspects I’m considering: preservation and money making,” Deutsch explains. “I know certain shows will probably never make back their investments. I’m very honest with the producer or the not-for-profit that is producing it. We then find angels to support the cast album, which is probably the most important tool if the show is going to have a life beyond this production. If a recording exists, productions will happen.”

Deutsch, of course, is not running a not-for-profit organization. He has to make money to stay in business. But he has gotten good at helping shows find money, whether he taps a moneyed believer in the show, the music publisher or other sponsors.

For releasing cast albums, Deutsch created a separate label called Ghostlight Records (named for the single bulb lamp left on stages after a performance), and among the cast albums he has released are this year’s Tony-winner for best musical, In the Heights, Legally Blonde, The Drowsy Chaperone, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and another recent Tony-winner, Passing Strange, which was recorded live and has the distinction of being the first original Broadway cast recording released in a digital format before it was released to brick-and-mortar stores.

“There will always be something physical people will buy, especially collectors of recordings,” Deutsch says. “Some people will always want to read the lyrics, see photos to get a sense of the show or just have a souvenir of the show, a tangible thing.”

But there’s no denying the fact that the digital revolution has made things easier for distributors: there’s no manufacturing cost, no shipping and customers around the world can acquire the product with the click of a mouse.

With this summer’s airing of MTV’s reality show search for a new lead in Legally Blonde, Deutsch says that Blonde music sales, already one of the label’s strong sellers, increased, with about 50 percent of sales going out digitally.

There was one potentially major gaffe associated with the conclusion of the MTV show, which revealed the winner and new Blonde star to be Bailey Hanks. Deutsch and his crew had already recorded Hanks singing the show’s “So Much Better,” which was scheduled for release the day after she was crowned the winner. But someone at Amazon.com didn’t get the memo and posted a 30-second clip of Hanks’ song days before they were supposed to. There was no name on the clip, but anyone watching the show would recognize Hanks as the singer.

“I was on vacation in Italy and got this frantic e-mail from the executive producer of the Legally Blonde show,” Deutsch recalls. “We had had to sign a confidentiality agreement with the show, and a mistake like that one could have cost us $500,000. They eventually took the clip down. Hopefully someone was fired.”

Part of Deutsch’s creative mission with these recordings is to make original cast albums vital again. He gave away a copy of the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels disc with every ticket sold during the show’s Broadway run. For “In the Heights” he created radio-friendly three-minute versions of some of the show’s songs. And Passing Strange went digital in time for its award-season appearances.

He also takes risks, like he did with the musical bare (which will have its San Francisco premiere next year). The small-scale musical about teens in Catholic school, was generating buzz off-Broadway. After meeting with producers, Deutsch recorded a 12-track disc that was essentially given away, mostly to youth groups and summer camps.

“We spent $50,000 to make the record and market it,” Deutsch says. “The idea was to create buzz to get the show to Broadway. Then the money fell apart, and it never opened on Broadway.”

Upcoming releases for Sh-K-Boom and Ghostlight include an archival recording of Patti LuPone’s legendary concerts at Les Mouches (Nov. 11), Michael John LaChiusa’s
Little Fish (Sept. 9) and Orfeh’s What Do You Want from Me (Sept. 30). Recent releases include Kelli O’Hara’s Wonder in the World, the cast album for the first Broadway musical of the season, [title of show],
and Lea Delaria’s The Live Smoke Sessions.

“The whole point of this is that we’re part of the community,” Deutsch says. “Sheri is part of the Broadway community. We have a lot of friends in the Broadway community. We’re performers and producers on Broadway, not some big, bad record label guys. We want to help grow Broadway and off-Broadway. This is a great time in history with a lot of great people, and we can help make something to remember them by.”

For information visit www.sh-k-boom.com or http://shkbuzz.wordpress.com

Missing the Tonys

For the last four days I’ve been in Ashland, Ore., reviewing shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the San Francisco Chronicle (more on that later), and while the Tonys were on Sunday night, I was at the opening of a new musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Of course I’ll watch the whole awards show on TiVo when I get home, but I was able to catch glimpses here and there (thanks to the spotty www.tonyawards.com online coverage), and of course I couldn’t wait to find out the winners.

I must say I’m disappointed that Passing Strange only one award (for best book of a musical). I guess I’m feeling territorial because the show had its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Still, it’s better than nothing. Here’s what co-creator and star Stew had to say about his win:

“Music is something that comes easy to me, and I’ve received numerous accolades for my songs – but to be honored for my writing means a whole hell of a lot, especially when it comes from theatre people for whom words really mean something. Those words took shape at Berkeley Rep, a place that makes space for people like me to take risks and try out things that theatre isn’t used to seeing. We loved working there, and we miss that Berkeley scene.”

More on the Tonys later. In the meantime, here’s a complete list of winners:

Play (and playwrights): “August: Osage County” (Tracy Letts).

Musical: “In the Heights.”

Book-Musical: “Passing Strange” (Stew).

Original Score (music and/or lyrics): “In the Heights” (Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Revival-Play: “Boeing-Boeing.”

Revival-Musical: “South Pacific.”

Actor-Play: Mark Rylance, “Boeing-Boeing.”

Actress-Play: Deanna Dunagan, “August: Osage County.”

Actor-Musical: Paulo Szot, “South Pacific.”

Actress-Musical: Patti LuPone, “Gypsy.”

Featured Actor-Play: Jim Norton, “The Seafarer.”

Featured Actress-Play: Rondi Reed, “August: Osage County.”

Featured Actor-Musical: Boyd Gaines, “Gypsy.”

Featured Actress-Musical: Laura Benanti, “Gypsy.”

Direction-Play: Anna D. Shapiro, “August: Osage County.”

Direction-Musical: Bartlett Sher, “South Pacific.”

Choreography: Andy Blankenbuehler, “In the Heights.”

Orchestrations: Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman, “In the Heights.”

Scenic Design-Play: Todd Rosenthal, “August: Osage County.”

Scenic Design-Musical: Michael Yeargen, “South Pacific.”

Costume Design-Play: Katrina Lindsay, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

Costume Design-Musical: Catherine Zuber, “South Pacific.”

Lighting Design-Play: Kevin Adams, “The 39 Steps.”

Lighting Design-Musical: Donald Holder, “South Pacific.”

Sound Design-Play: Mic Pool, “The 39 Steps.”

Sound Design-Musical: Scott Lehrer, “South Pacific.”

Previously announced:

Regional Theater Tony Award: Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Special Tony Award: Robert Russell Bennett.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Stephen Sondheim.