The first Broadway production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart has been awarded the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Kramer’s play that focuses on the emergence of the AIDS crisis was first performed off Broadway in 1985. Producer Daryl Roth described the production as a ‘labour of love’ and thanked playwright Kramer for his ‘compassion, truth and righteous rage.’
In accepting the award Kramer said,
‘To gay people everywhere, whom I love so, The Normal Heart is our history, I could not have written it, if had not so many of us needlessly died. Learn from it and carry on the fight. Let the people know that we are a special people, an exceptional people and that our day will come.’
Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey also received awards for their roles in the production.
The Tony awards, which have been described as ‘the gay super bowl’, featured a whole lot of other queer moments too. Host Neil Patrick Harris opened the show with a musical number declaring that theatre was for everyone, ‘not just gays anymore’.
Disco diva Martha Wash also appeared singing her Weather Girls hit It’s Raining Men as part of the performance of the cast of the musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Australian costume designers Tim Chapel and Lizzy Gardiner picked up the award for best costumes in a musical.
Other major winners included The Book of Mormon, a musical collaboration from the creators of South Park and Avenue Q, which was declared the Best New Musical. Best New Play was awarded to Warhorse and Best Musical Revival was Anything Goes.
Graeme Watson
