Harold Wilson was more of a fan of operetta – knowing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan almost by heart – than of theatre, with biographies suggesting that he even flirted with possible ways of banning Mrs Wilson’s Diary, a satirical play about his wife. So it is one of the odder twists in a Westminster afterlife that, a year before Wilson’s birth centenary, one of America’s most treasured theatre awards has gone to a portrayal of a prime minister largely forgotten even in Britain.
In giving a 2015 Tony to the Scottish actor Richard McCabe, who plays the pipe-smoking PM in the Broadway production of Peter Morgan’s The Audience, New York’s theatre community has broken the convention that showbiz prizes tend to be parochial. Almost as geographically open-minded was the award of best revival of a play to an exploration of the sexual and social politics of east London during the John Major administration: David Hare’s Skylight.
The choice of Dame Helen Mirren for her turn as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience can be regarded as internationalist rather than anglophile as Mirren already has an Oscar for the same role in the movie The Queen. As she also possesses an Emmy award for Prime Suspect, Dame Helen may be on the look-out for a high-class audio-book as she now only needs to land a Grammy recording trophy to join the dozen entertainers in the so-called EGOT club, who have nabbed Tonys, Oscars, Emmys and Grammys.
An extraordinary 34 nominations for workers or work with British connections converted to 10 winners on the night. In previous Tonys (and Oscars) lists dominated by British nominations, voters have – rather like those “shy Tories” who are supposed to have “gone home” in the ballot booths on 7 May – shown tribal loyalty at the last moment. That isn’t, though, what happened this time.
While the Hilary Mantel adaptation Wolf Hall will be disappointed with just a costume design trophy (for Christopher Oram) from its seven nominations, its problem was not being foreign but a rival British literary import finding greater favour: in five separate sections, the Tudor story lost to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted from Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel.
Perhaps ominously for the state of native Broadway theatre, home-grown shows flourished mainly in the musical categories where the Brits had no dogs in the fight.
The stand-out American performer was Fun Home, a musical that originated off-Broadway, based on Alison Bechdel’s memoir, written in comic-book form, of coming out as a lesbian in rural Pennsylvania. The five Tonys for Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s show seem likely to encourage bids from both subsidised and commercial producers in the UK to import a work that has shown an ability to bring in the diverse younger audiences much craved by the business. A leading theatre producer who has seen it suggested to me that the Young Vic might be a natural home for Fun Home in Britain.
Unexpected success for a new version of the schmalzy 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein piece The King and I, which took three prizes, may have resulted from becoming a compromise option for more conservative older voters unwilling to back either British interlopers or a gay musical.
Two of the most career-transforming awards are for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Director Marianne Elliott, already considered a future boss of the National Theatre if she wants the job, will now be in high demand on Broadway as well, while English-born Alex Sharp, a theatrical debutant in his mid-20s, beat men with lengthy CVs and was honoured for his performance as Christopher, a teenager with an unspecified autism-type disorder.
Among those Sharp beat was movie-star Bradley Cooper whose much-admired performance in The Elephant Man, requiring nightly physical distortion, was ultimately overlooked. There seems to have been a late swing away from the revival of Bernard Pomerance’s 1977 play which had several nominations but took nothing home.
