The 2022 Tony Awards, celebrating the best in Broadway theater for the 2021-22 season, were held on June 12 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York. A Strange Loop and The Lehman Trilogy won Best Musical and Best Play, respectively, while Company and The Lehman Trilogy led all productions with five awards.
While there were a few repeat winners at the 75th annual Tony Awards (Patti LuPone won her third Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Company), many actors and stage crew won awards for the first time in their careers. Below is a look at six of those first-time winners.
1. Stefano Massini
Along with co-writer Ben Power, Stefano Massini won his first Tony Award for Best Play for The Lehman Trilogy. A three-act play detailing the rise and fall of an investment firm founded by three immigrant brothers with a focus on the 2008 financial crisis, The Lehman Trilogy was first written for the stage and has since been translated into two dozen languages and published as a novel. It debuted in London’s West End at the National Theatre in 2018 and made its way to Broadway just prior to the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020. It received eight Tony Award nominations.
Although it was the first Tony for Massini, it was far from the first prestigious award he has won. The 46-year-old Italian playwright and novelist is a past recipient of two of Italy’s most distinguished theater prizes: the Ubu award and Vittorio Tondelli prize. Moreover, his writing has been staged in many countries, including Germany, France, Canada, and Argentina.
2. Toby Marlow
Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss won their first Tony for Best Score for Six, a modern representation of the lives of King Henry VIII’s six wives presented as a pop concert with a comedic slant. First presented in 2017 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it debuted on Broadway in February 2020 with cast members Adrianna Hicks (Catherine of Aragon), Andrea Macasaet (Anne Boleyn), Abby Mueller (Jane Seymour), Brittney Mack (Anna of Cleves), Samantha Purdy (Katherine Howard), and Anna Uzele (Catherine Parr).
Marlow’s win was not only a monumental moment for the lyricist-composer, but also one for the Tony Awards and Broadway as he was the first openly nonbinary person to win for best original score. This year’s ceremony was a celebration of diversity and inclusion: Michael R. Jackson, winner of Best Book for a Musical, is a Black gay man; Adam Rigg, scenic designer for The Skin of Our Teeth, was the first openly agender designer nominated for a Tony; and L. Morgan Lee, nominee for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical, was the first openly transgender actor nominated for a Tony.
“It just feels really amazing to be part of a season where there’s so much queerness on stage explicitly,” Marlow exclaimed in the press room after winning his award. “Representation is pretty fab.”
3. Myles Frost
Myles Frost, who portrayed iconic and controversial musician Michael Jackson in MJ, won his first Tony in the Leading Actor in a Musical category. Frost, who was also making his Broadway debut after being discovered in a viral video in which he was performing Jackson’s hit “Billie Jean” on a hoverboard, won the award ahead of more experienced and well-known actors like Billy Crystal (Mr. Saturday Night) and Hugh Jackman (The Music Man).
4. Deirdre O’Connell
Deirdre O’Connell had to wait much longer than Frost to earn her first Tony. The veteran stage actor, whose prior Broadway credits include The Front Page and Magic/Bird, won the Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Play for Dana H., a harrowing true story about a woman, Dana Higginbotham, who was held captive for five months. The play was adapted from interviews with Higginbotham and developed for the stage by her son, Lucas Hnath.
O’Connell, who beat out fellow nominees like Ruth Negga (Macbeth) and Mary-Louise Parker (How I Learned to Drive), also won an Outer Critics Circle Award and Obie Award for her performance in Dana H.
5. Matt Doyle
Matt Doyle was another stage performer to earn his first Tony in 2022. The first-time nominee beat out John-Andrew Morrison (A Strange Loop), A.J. Shively (Paradise Square), Sidney DuPont (Paradise Square), and Jared Grimes (Funny Girl) to win Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance as Jamie in Company, a musical comedy that also won the Tony for Best Revival. Prior to his award-winning performance in Company, Doyle appeared in Broadway shows such as War Horse and The Book of Mormon.
6. Gabriella Slade
A talented and experienced costume designer, Gabriella Slade won her first Tony for Best Costume Design of a Musical for Six. She also won the same award for Six at the Off-West End ceremony in 2019 and, that same year, designed costumes for the Spice Girls and their dancers for Spice World 2019. Her other credits include Bedknobs & Broomsticks, The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Last Days of Anne Boleyn.