The Tony Awards 2016

James Corden's best moment was right at the top. "This is like the Super Bowl for people who don't know what the Super Bowl is."

Here are all the nominees and winners, in the order they were awarded and/or announced:

FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Pascale Armand, Eclipsed
Megan Hilty, Noises Off
*Jayne Houdyshell, The Humans

Andrea Martin, Noises Off
Saycon Sengbloh, Eclipsed

FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
*Renee Elise Goldsberry, Hamilton
Jane Krakowski, She Loves Me
Jennifer Simard, Disaster!
Adrienne Warren, Shuffle Along

COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Gregg Barnes, Tuck Everlasting
Jeff Mahshie, She Loves Me
Ann Roth, Shuffle Along
*Paul Tazewell, Hamilton

COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY
Jane Greenwood, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Michael Krass, Noises Off
*Clint Ramos, Eclipsed
Tom Scutt, King Charles III

FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
*Daveed Diggs, Hamilton
Brandon Victor Dixon, Shuffle Along
Christopher Fitzgerald, Waitress
Jonathan Groff, Hamilton
Christopher Jackson, Hamilton

ORIGINAL SCORE
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, Bright Star
*Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
Glenn Slater and Andrew Lloyd Webber, School of Rock
Sara Bareilles, Waitress

DIRECTION OF A PLAY
 Rupert Gold, King Charles III
Jonathan Kent, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Joe Mantello, The Humans
Liesl Tommy, Eclipsed
*Ivo Van Hove, A View From the Bridge

DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL
Michael Arden, Spring AwakenTheing
John Doyle, The Color Purple
Scott Ellis, She Loves Me
*Thomas Kail, Hamilton
George C. Wolfe, Shuffle Along

SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY
Beowulf Boritt, Thérèse Raquin
Christopher Oram, Hughie
Jan Versweyveld, A View from the Bridge
*David Zinn, The Humans

SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Es Devlin and Finn Ross, American Psycho
David Korins, Hamilton
Santo Loquasto, Shuffle Along
*David Rockwell, She Loves Me

FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY
*Reed Birney, The Humans
Bill Camp, The Crucible
David Furr, Noises Off
Richard Goulding, King Charles III
Michael Shannon, Long Day's Journey Into Night

LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY
*Natasha Katz, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Justin Townsend, The Humans
Jan Versweyveld, The Crucible
Jan Versweyveld, A View from the Bridge

LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
*Howell Binkley, Hamilton
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, Shuffle Along
Ben Stanton, Spring Awakening
Justin Townsend, American Psycho

LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
*Jessica Lange, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Laurie Metcalf, Misery
Lupita Nyong'o, Eclipsed
Sophie Okonedo, The Crucible
Michelle Williams, Blackbird

LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY
Gabriel Byrne, Long Day's Journey Into Night
Jeff Daniels, Blackbird
*Frank Langella, The Father 
Tim Pigott-Smith, King Charles II
Mark Strong, A View from the Bridge

ORCHESTRATIONS
August Eriksmoen, Bright Star
Larry Hochman, She Loves Me
*Alex Lacamoire, Hamilton
Daryl Waters, Shuffle Along

CHOREOGRAPHY
*Andy Blankenbuehler, Hamilton
Savion Glover, Shuffle Along
Hofesh Shechter, Fiddler on the Roof
Randy Skinner, Dames at Sea
Sergio Trujillo, On Your Feet

BOOK OF A MUSICAL
Steve Martin, Bright Star
*Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
Julian Fellowes, School of Rock
George C. Wolfe, Shuffle Along

BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY
*A View From the Bridge, by Arthur Miller
Blackbird, by David Harrower
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
Long Day's Journey Into Night, by Eugene O'Neill
Noises Off, by Michael Frayn

BEST PLAY
Eclipsed by Danai Gurira
The Father by Florian Zeller
*The Humans by Stephen Karam
King Charles III by Mike Bartlett

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL
*The Color Purple
Fiddler on the Roof
She Loves Me
Spring Awakening

LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Alex Brightman, School of Rock
Danny Burstein, Fiddler on the Roof
Zachary Levi, She Loves Me
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
*Leslie Odom, Jr., Hamilton

LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Laura Benanti, She Loves Me
Carmen Cusack, Bright Star
*Cynthia Erivo, The Color Purple
Jessie Mueller, Waitress
Phillipa Soo, Hamilton

BEST MUSICAL
Bright Star
*Hamilton
School of Rock
Shuffle Along
Waitress

Catching Up with the Merry, Murderous Month of May

It's May, which can only mean one thing. Tony Awards! Or at least the Tony nominations and a whole lot of discussion about who will win. If you haven't seen the nominations list yet, go take a look now. As expected, Hamilton cleaned up in the musical categories, picking up a historical number of nominations with 16. Yes, that's more than The Producers got back in 2001 (15), as well as more than the number of colonies (13) when Hamilton was helping to nation-build and more than the number of dollars (10) a Hamilton is worth and will continue to be worth after dodging a bullet from the Treasury and their money redesign people. History! It's fun! The awards will be presented June 12 on CBS with James Corden hosting.

If you're looking for a major piece of film history, you need to see Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, which will be on screen tonight at 7 pm at the Normal Theater as part of their Tuesday Night Classics series. Renoir's film was made in 1939, when France was on the brink of World War II, but it was not well received at that time, and with no love from audiences, Nazis invading and Americans bombing, this masterpiece about different classes of French men and women playing at games of sex and romance in a country house was almost lost completely. But a restored print resurfaced twenty years later, putting The Rules of the Game at the top of "best of" lists ever since. Roger Ebert called it "magical and elusive" as he concluded it was "so simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous, that you can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it."

Life looked very different 45 years later in the movie that has the late-night slot at the Art Theater and Co-op in Champaign Wednesday and Thursday. In memory of Prince, they'll be playing Purple Rain May 4 at 10 pm and May 5 at 11 pm. I lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul when Purple Rain was released in 1984, and let's just say people in those Twin Cities embraced their native son and then some. Purple Rain's picture of a talented musician with a fantastic sense of fashion, a beautiful love interest and a very messy home life defined the 80s for a lot of people. The Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III played the abusive father in the mix, with Apollonia as the stunning woman Prince's character, called "The Kid" was interested in. Prince's soundtrack for Purple Rain includes songs like "I Would Die 4 U," "When Doves Cry," "Darling Nikki" and "Let's Go Crazy" along with the title tune.

Marriage and betrayal are at the heart of Frederick Knott's thriller Dial M for Murder, on stage at Community Players from May 5 to 15. It's not so much a whodunit, since we know from the get-go that Tony Wendice, a man with murder on his mind, is the bad guy. Tony, played by Maurice Evans in the 1952 Broadway production of the play and by Ray Milland in the 1954 Hitchcock movie, has decided to do away with his wealthy wife, both because she's been having an affair and because he wants her money. But he doesn't want to get caught, so he blackmails a ne'er-do-well acquaintance into doing it for him at a time when he has a perfect alibi. And that's when things fall apart. Grace Kelly famously played the wife for Hitchcock, with Robert Cummings as her lover and Anthony Dawson and John Williams reprising their roles from the Broadway production as the criminal colleague forced into murder and the police inspector trying to make sense of it all. For Community Players, Andrew German is Tony, with Hannah Artman as his wife, Branden Smith as her boyfriend, Brian Artman as the would-be murderer, John D. Poling as Inspector Hubbard, and Jason Maloy as Thompson, another policeman.

Back at the Normal Theater, Ingrid Bergman fans have reasons to celebrate. The Normal Theater will show three of her movies -- Gaslight, Murder on the Orient Express and Notorious -- between May 17 and 28, with a documentary called Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words shown on other evenings as counterpoint to Bergman's films. Gaslight will be on screen on May 17 as a Tuesday Night Classic, with Murder on the Orient Express on May 20 and 22 and Notorious on May 26 and 28. The documentary plays on May 18, 21, 27 and 29.

Released in 1944, Gaslight stars Bergman as the victim of a scheme -- flickering lights, mysterious noises -- to convince her that she is mad. This is the movie that coined the verb "gaslight" to mean exactly that sort of scheme. Bergman plays opposite Charles Boyer, as her husband, and a very young Angela Lansbury as their maid. Bergman won her first Oscar for Gaslight and then earned her third 30 years later in Murder on the Orient Express. In this all-star adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery novel, Bergman was cast against type as a frumpy, devout Swedish missionary who happens to be a passenger on the train where a horrible man was murdered in the middle of the night. Albert Finney plays detective Hercule Poirot, with a supporting cast that includes Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York. Out of all of those actors, Bergman was the only one to walk away with the Academy Award.

And then there's Notorious, a sexy, suspenseful Hitchcock piece from 1946, with Bergman caught up in spy games with Cary Grant. Her father was a bad, bad man, a German who lived in the United States but was caught and tried for treason after World War II. Now Bergman's character, Alicia, has a bad reputation of her own, but Cary convinces her to team up with him to try to take down a creepy band of Nazis in Brazil. Her job entails romancing -- and even marrying -- Claude Rains, leader of the band, and trying not to get on the bad side of his evil mother. It's all very tricky, Cary plays down and dirty, and you'll need to keep an eye on the beverages in the plot, since both tea and champagne turn out to be important. I love this movie. I have its poster on my wall. Go see it on the big screen when you have a chance!

The last theater piece I have for May is Annie Baker's Body Awareness, scheduled for Illinois Wesleyan University's E. Melba Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre for three 8 pm performances between May 22 and 24. Baker's play is set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont, also the setting for her Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. This time, Baker looks at a college professor who has set up campus seminars on the topic of Body Awareness, her partner, her son, and the photographer who specializes in female nudes who comes to stay in their house. The play involves gender, art and what happens to when people are not only aware of bodies, but what's inside. Click here for what information is currently available on the IWU SOTA production.

If you are willing to drive to Springfield or perhaps Joliet, you can catch the Royal Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare Live! in a movie theater on May 23. The RSC celebrated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death with Shakespeare Live!, which included "performances of some of the greatest dramatic scenes ever written, played by some of our greatest actors, as well as songs, comedy, dances and music celebrating Shakespeare's legacy. The show was conceived and directed by Gregory Doran and hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate." Other actors who appeared included Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joseph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear and Sir Ian McKellen. It was broadcast in Britain on BBC Two on April 23, but May 23 will be our first chance to see it in the states, now under the title The Shakespeare Show. If you're in England, you can watch the show on the RSC site, and the RSC Shop is also promising a DVD at some point. Let's hope they make a  DVD we can see watch here, too!

Pulitzer Prize for Drama Goes to Lin-Manuel Miranda and HAMILTON

Hamilton, the incredibly popular musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer committee calls Hamilton, "A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible."

Hamilton becomes only the ninth musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama since it started in 1918, after Of Thee I Sing* by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin, awarded in 1932; South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan, in 1950; Fiorello! with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, awarded in 1960; How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Abe Burrows,  in 1962; A Chorus Line, by by Michael Bennett, James Kirkwood, Jr., Marvin Hamlisch, Nicholas Dante and Edward Kleban, awarded in 1976, Sunday in the Park with George, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine, in 1985; Jonathan Larson's Rent in 1996, and Next to Normal, by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, in 2010.

This year's finalists were Gloria, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "whip-smart satire" that looks at media, violence and ambition, and The Humans, Stephen Karam's unsettling drama about a middle-class family in decline.


*The Pulitzer Prize for Of Thee I Sing did not include George Gershwin, who composed its music. Richard Rodgers, who wrote the score for South Pacific, was a recipient, however, as the Pulitzer committee had decided by that point that a musical's music was an important part of its overall worthiness for the award.