Australian play Prima Facie scores top gong at Tony Awards

New York: The Australian one-woman play Prima Facie has scored a top gong at the Tony Awards, with Jodie Comer winning for leading actress. Written by Australian playwright Suzie Miller, Prima Facie is Comer’s Broadway debut.

The play, which illustrates how current laws can fail terribly when it comes to sexual assault cases, won the United Kingdom’s top gong for best new play at the Olivier awards in April, when Comer, the three-time Emmy nominated star of Killing Eve, was also named as best actress in her West End performance.

Jodie Comer in the British production of Prima Facie.Credit: Helen Murray

The legal thriller is Comer’s first performance on a professional stage. Only last week the 30-year-old had to stop the Broadway performance due to breathing difficulties caused by smoke from the Canadian wildfires.

The 76th Tony Awards, staged at United Palace Theatre in Manhattan, honoured John Kander, the 96-year-old composer behind such landmark shows as Chicago, Cabaret and The Scottsboro Boys, with a special lifetime award.

Jennifer Grey handed her father, Cabaret star Joel Grey, the other lifetime achievement Tony. “Being recognised by the theatre community is such a gift because it’s always been, next to my children, my greatest, most enduring love,” the actor said.

Kimberly Akimbo won the musical crown on a night when Broadway flexed its creative muscle amid the Hollywood writers’ strike, and made history with awards for nonbinary actors J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell.

“Thank you for the humanity. Thank you for my incredible company who raised me up every single day,” said Ghee, who stars in Some Like It Hot, the stage adaptation of the classic cross-dressing comedy film. Ghee stunned audiences with their voice and dance skills, playing a musician — on the run from gangsters — who tries on a dress and is transformed.

Jodie Comer accepts the Tony Award for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play, “Prima Facie,” during the 76th Tony Awards in New York.Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Newell, who plays Lulu in Shucked, has been blowing audiences away with their signature number, Independently Owned. They won for best featured actor in a musical.

“Thank you for seeing me, Broadway ... and to anyone that thinks that they can’t do it, I’m going to look you dead in your face that you can do anything you put your mind to,” Newell said.

Kimberly Akimbo, with songs by Jeanine Tesori and based on a book by David Lindsay-Abaire, follows a teen with a rare genetic disorder, navigating a dysfunctional family and a high school romance. Victoria Clark, as the lead in the show, won a second Tony, having previously won in 2005 for The Light in the Piazza.

Kimberly Akimbo took home a leading five awards, including best book and score.

Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, won best play, also earning wins for director Patrick Marber, featured actor Brandon Uranowitz and Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes.

The British-Czech playwright, who now has five best play Tony Awards, joked he won his first in 1968 and noted that playwrights were “getting progressively devalued in the food chain” despite being “the sharp ends of the inverted pyramid.”

Winners demonstrated their support for the striking writers either at the podium or on the red carpet. Miriam Silverman, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a play for The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, ended her speech with: “My parents raised me to believe in the power of labor and workers being compensated and treated fairly. We stand with the WGA in solidarity!”

Sean Hayes won lead actor in a play for Good Night, Oscar, and Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about sibling rivalry, inequality and society’s false promises, won the Tony for best play revival.

with Jocelyn Noveck

AP