A Strange Loop has won the best musical at the 75th Tony Awards held on Sunday 12 June, according to multiple reports.
The show, which was embraced by critics, is the meta tale of a Black gay man writing a musical about a Black gay man writing a musical. It already captured a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 after it played Off-Broadway.
A Strange Loop creator Michael R. Jackson used his acceptance speech for winning best book of a musical to acknowledge the importance of the kind of representation achieved this season.
With A Strange Loop winning the top musical award, actress Jennifer Hudson became only the 17th person to achieve an EGOT — winning an Emmy, a Grammy, and Oscar, and a Tony in competitive categories. Hudson didn’t perform, but instead was a producer.
Other major winners for the night were The Lehman Trilogy, which captured the prize for best play, while Company won best musical revival and Take Me Out nabbed the award for best revival of a play.
Company, which flipped the gender of the protagonist of Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical to tell a more female-focused story, earned five prizes. Its victory was bittersweet, coming roughly seven months after its creator died at the age of 91.
The Lehman Trilogy, an epic drama charting the history of one of the financial institutions that helped spark the 2008 recession, also won five Tony Awards, including prizes for Sam Mendes’ direction and for the lead performance of Simon Russell Beale.
The ceremony, which unfolded with characteristic razzle dazzle, caps one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the theatre business in America. After being closed for nearly two years due to Covid, Broadway began slowly reopening at the end of last summer, but its recovery has unfolded in fits and starts.
