Glenn Close boasts a spectacular Tony success rate, with three Best Actress wins spanning both plays (The Real Thing and Death and the Maiden) and musicals (Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, plus a featured actress nomination for Barnum). The versatile Close, who just finished a third season as charismatic lawyer Patty Hewes on Damages (which has earned her two Emmys ...

When a Broadway debut yields a Best Actor Tony Award, it's obvious that the performer and role are perfectly matched. Such was the case when John Lloyd Young burst onto the Broadway scene as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys. In bringing the Four Seasons icon to life, Young gave a magnetic star turn (featuring an impeccable falsetto) and was ...

At the time she won her Tony in 1999 for You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Kristin Chenoweth was a charming theater actress known for her tiny size and her powerful singing voice. These days Chenoweth, who was nominated again in 2004 for Wicked, is a recognizable star thanks to appearances in a bunch movies, guest star spots on ...

The 2010 Tony Awards are just around the corner and one lucky show (either American Idiot, Fela, Memphis or Million Dollar Quartet) will become the first show of the new decade to be crowned Best Musical. With the fresh decade upon us, we’re looking back at the musicals that took home the top Tony prize over the last ten ...

Marissa Jaret Winokur appeared on the Great White Way as two adorably chubby gals: Jan in the hit revival of Grease and Tracy Turnblad in the blockbuster musical Hairspray. Now she lives in Los Angeles and has been dancing her a** off (no, seriously: she hosted Dance Your A** Off, ended up in good standing on Dancing With the Stars ...

Lea Salonga was only 20 years old when she stepped up the podium to accept the Best Actress Tony for her heartbreaking portrayal of Kim in Miss Saigon. (Amazingly enough, she had first played the demanding role of the doomed young Vietnamese mother at age 18 in the musical’s original London production.) Since then, Salonga has been a superstar ...

You probably recall John Lithgow's 2002 Tony win for Sweet Smell of Success and his nominations for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, M. Butterfly and maybe even Requiem for a Heavyweight. But his first victory could qualify as a Tony trivia question. The year was 1973, and the play was David Storey's The Changing Room, a behind-the-scenes look at a ...

The versatile Harvey Fierstein is the proud winner of four Tony Awards, each representing a different category: Best Book of a Musical in 1984 for La Cage aux Folles (a show that's picked up 11 nominations in 2010 for its second Broadway revival), Best Actor in a Musical for Hairspray in 2003; and  two for his seminal dramedy Torch ...

About the author:
Eight years ago, writer Jim Lewis (This Beautiful City, Tony Award nominee for the book to Chronicle of a Death Untold) got involved with an unlikely project: bringing the story of Afrobeat pioneer and political revolutionary Fela Anikulapo Kuti to the stage, as presented by acclaimed choreographer and artist Bill T. Jones. To some, the project may ...

Where Sutton Foster goes, Tony nominations follow. A winner her first-time out of the gate for her “star-is-born” performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Foster has racked up three more Best Actress nods since, for Little Women (2005), The Drowsy Chaperone (2006) and Shrek the Musical (2009). We fondly remember Sutton’s gracious acceptance speech back in 2002, which included a ...