Tony Awards 2019: 'Hadestown' triumphs, alongside Bryan Cranston and small wins for diversity

Cranston seemed to tap into the vibe when he joked "Finally, a straight old white man gets a break!"

Bryan Cranston accepts the Leading Actor in a Play award for 'Network'. Reuters.

Hadestown, the brooding musical about the underworld, triumphed at the Tony Awards on Sunday, nabbing eight trophies – including a rare win for a female director.

Playwright Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman was crowned best play. Bryan Cranston, Elaine May, Santino Fontana and Stephanie J Block all won leading actor and actress awards.

The crowd at Radio City Music Hall erupted when Ali Stroker made history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. Stroker, paralysed from the chest down due to a car crash when she was 2, won for Featured Actresses in a Musical for her work in a dark revival of Oklahoma!.

"This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena," she said. "You are."

Rachel Chavkin, the only woman to helm a new Broadway musical this season, won the Tony for Best Director of a Musical for Hadestown. She told the crowd she was sorry to be such a rarity on Broadway.

"There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many people of color who are ready to go." A lack of strides in embracing diversity on Broadway, she said, "is not a pipeline issue" but a lack of imagination.

Cranston seemed to tap into the vibe when he won the Tony for Best Leading Man in a play award for his work as newscaster Howard Beale in a stage adaptation of Network.

"Finally, a straight old white man gets a break!" he joked. The star, who wore a blue pin on his suit to support reproductive rights, also dedicated his award to journalists who are in the line of fire. "The media is not the enemy of the people," he said. "Demagoguery is the enemy of the people."

The cheers for women also got a boost when Butterworth, who earlier asked the crowd to give his partner, actress Laura Donnelly, a round of applause for giving birth to their two children in two years while working on the ensemble drama, handed the best play trophy to Donnelly. A Donnelly family story inspired him to write the play.

Fontana won his first Tony Award as the cross-dressing lead in Tootsie. Fontana, perhaps best known for his singing role as Hans in Frozen, won in an adaptation of the 1982 Dustin Hoffman film about a struggling actor who impersonated a woman in order to improve his chances of getting a job.

Another first-time winner was Block, who earned her Tony Award for playing a legend — Cher. Block, who has had roles on Homeland and Orange Is the New Black, is one of three actresses to play the title character in the musical The Cher Show. She thanked "the goddess Cher for her life and legacy".

Other winners included the legendary May, who took home her first ever Tony for Best Leading Actress, playing the Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother in Kenneth Lonergan's comic drama The Waverly Gallery.

Andre DeShields won for Featured Actor in a Musical for Hadestown, his first Tony at the age of 73. In his speech, he gave "three cardinal rules of my sustainability and longevity".

"One, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming. Two, slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be, and three, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing."

Media personality and actor James Corden, in his second stint as Tony host, was at his fanboy best, whether anxiously hiding in a bathroom with previous hosts Josh Groban and Sara Bareillies, or trying to provoke a Nicki Minaj-Cardi B-style beef between usually overly polite and supportive Broadway figures (Laura Linney and Audra McDonald finally obliged). He also asked celebrities to sing karaoke during the commercials.

He kicked off the show with a massive, nine-minute opening number that served as a full-throated endorsement of the live experience, with Corden beginning it seated alone on a couch in front of a TV, overwhelmed by his binge options, before taking flight with dozens of glitzy dancers from this season's shows, all filling the Radio City stage with an unprecedented volume.

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The first acting award went to Celia Keenan-Bolger, who won for Best Featured Actress in a play for her role as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. She noted that her parents read her the book when she was a child in Detroit and had burning crosses put on their lawn because they helped African Americans.

Bertie Carvel won best featured actor in a play for Ink. He said he wished he could be with his mother, hospitalized in London: "I love you, mum."

Oscar-winning director and producer Sam Mendes won his first directing Tony Award for guiding The Ferryman.

Early Hadestown wins were for scenic design, sound design, lighting design and orchestrations. It would also go on to earn singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell a Tony for best score.

Legendary designer Bob Mackie won the Tony for best costume designs for a musical for "The Cher Show," getting laughs for saying "This is very encouraging for an 80-year-old."

The awards cap a season that showed Broadway was in good shape. The shows this season reported a record $1.8 billion (Dh6.6b) in sales, up 7.8 percent from last season. Attendance was 14.8 million — up 7.1 percent — and has risen steadily for decades.