The Ceremony
The show opened with a tribute to Richard Rodgers, featuring a medley of his songs performed by Marvin Hamlisch, Harry Connick Jr, Michele Lee, Mos Def, Lea Salonga, Peter Gallagher, John Raitt, Bernadette Peters, Gregory Hines, and the company of Oklahoma! A Broadway/New York song medley was performed by Bernadette Peters and Gregory Hines.
Presentations from nominated musicals:
- Into the Woods, "Children Will Listen", "Ever After" and "Into the Woods" - Vanessa Williams, John McMartin and company;
- Mamma Mia!, Medley;
- Thoroughly Modern Millie, "Forget About the Boy"/"Thoroughly Modern Millie" - Sutton Foster, Anne L. Nathan, Casey Nicholaw, Noah Racey and company;
- Sweet Smell of Success, "Dirt" - John Lithgow and company;
- Urinetown The Musical, "Run, Freedom, Run" - Hunter Foster, Spencer Kayden, Jeff McCarthy, and company;
- Oklahoma!, "The Farmer and the Cowman" - Company.
The First Ten awards were presented prior to the full ceremony and broadcast on PBS. The awards presented were: Best Direction of a Play, Direction of a Musical, Book of a Musical, Original Score, Choreography, Costume Design, Lighting Design and Scenic Design. There were also interviews and "rehearsal and performance clips from the nominated shows."
The broadcast won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program; the director was Glenn Weiss.
Read more about this topic: 56th Tony Awards
Famous quotes containing the word ceremony:
“But ceremony never did conceal,
Save to the silly eye, which all allows,
How much we are the woods we wander in.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)