58th ANNUAL TONY® AWARDS

[desdemona]

Hugh Jackman will host the 58th ANNUAL TONY® AWARDS

The 58th Annual Tony Awards®, the most anticipated evening in American Theater, will be broadcast live from the Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday, June 6, at 8 PM, live ET/delayed PT on CBS. This is the seventh year that the historic Radio City Music Hall is home to the Tonys.

Tony Bennett and Mary J. Blige will perform a musical salute to Broadway, while musical performances from nominated shows will include: "Assassins," "Avenue Q," "The Boy From Oz," "Caroline, or Change," "Fiddler on the Roof," "Wicked" and "Wonderful Town."

Presenters will include Carol Channing, Sean Combs, Taye Diggs, Edie Falco, Jimmy Fallon, Harvey Fierstein, Victor Garber, Joel Grey, Ethan Hawke, Anne Heche, Billy Joel, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Jane Krakowski, Peter Krause, Swoosie Kurtz, Nathan Lane, Laura Linney, John Lithgow, LL Cool J, Rob Marshall, Dame Helen Mirren, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Anna Paquin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bernadette Peters, Phylicia Rashad, Chita Rivera, John Rubenstein, Carol Bayer Sager, Martin Short, Patrick Stewart, Sigourney Weaver, Marissa Jaret Winokur and Renee Zellweger.

more about the Tony's here:

http://www.cbs.com/specials/58tonys/

[DudeAsInCool]

Tony Awards Finish Up With a Fuzzy Surprise

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: June 7, 2004

Avenue Q," the offbeat show about a band of furry-headed slacker puppets and their equally fuzzy human cohorts, pulled a stunning upset last night at the 58th annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall, winning best musical, the evening's top prize, as well as prizes for best book and best score.

On the dramatic side "I Am My Own Wife," Doug Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about an East German transvestite, won for best play and for its sole actor, Jefferson Mays, who plays more than 40 characters.

But it was the announcement of the award for "Avenue Q," which began at a small Off Broadway theater before leaping to Broadway last summer, that drew gasps inside the music hall, where many spectators expected the prize to go to "Wicked," a blockbuster $14 million show based on "The Wizard of Oz" that was considered a favorite for best musical.

The win by "Avenue Q" drew an ecstatic group of producers and performers from the show onstage.

"Thank you, Broadway, for voting your heart," said one of the show's lead producers, Jeffrey Seller.

"Assassins," the revival of the 1991 Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman musical about singing sociopaths, produced by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, led all productions with five Tonys, including best revival of a musical and one for Joe Mantello, the director.

There was even a little history made, as Phylicia Rashad, who heads the cast in the revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," won for best leading actress in a play and became the first African-American woman to win that prize. Ms. Rashad silenced the sell-out crowd, and thanked her parents, family and God for her win.

"When I was little my mother taught me I could do anything and I wouldn't be scarred by racism," Ms. Rashad said later in the press room. "This is an honor for any actress and that's the truth."

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/theater/theat...cial/index.html