If the Tony Awards are like the World Cup, then the cheerful dinner party that Anna Wintour and Bee Carrozzini host at home in the weeks before the ceremony each spring is a bit like one of the pre-tournament friendlies. It’s a chance for some of the standout performers of the season—and the directors and playwrights behind their material—to limber up and rub shoulders a bit before formally facing off.
Such was the premise of the joint remarks that Wintour and Carrozzini delivered on Sunday night, as they welcomed some 50 members of New York’s theater set for cocktails in the living room of Wintour’s Manhattan townhouse, followed by a relaxed seated dinner downstairs and cake for dessert (created this year by pastry chef Daniel Colonel).
“You’ve all been through rounds and rounds of nominations, warm salads, and what the theater community sweetly calls ‘galas,’ seemingly pitting you all against each other,” Wintour said.
“But the spirit of the World Cup isn’t about winning, it’s about bringing everyone together with all their special talents, skills, and craft,” added Carrozzini.
Their guests certainly had talent, skill, and craft in abundance. Among the earliest to arrive and step out into Wintour’s backyard for a brief portrait session with Emilio Madrid—a regular presence at opening nights, both on the carpet and behind the scenes—were three of the best (and busiest) directors currently working on Broadway: Kenny Leon, who brought to life a neighborhood association run hilariously amok via David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters; Lear DeBessonet, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, whose revival of Ragtime raked in 11 Tony nominations this year (five members of her cast—Joshua Henry, in a divine shade of butter yellow; his Sarah, the preternaturally talented Nichelle Lewis; Brandon Uranowitz, looking spiffy in Saint Laurent; Caissie Levy, in an ethereal, powder-blue Prada shift; and Ben Levi Ross, in a fetching stand-collar jacket from Kenzo—would join the party later on); and Whitney White, who with playwright Bess Wohl staged the stunningly moving memory play Liberation at the James Earl Jones Theatre last fall. (Wohl, along with Liberation stars Susannah Flood and Betsy Aidem, weren’t long behind her.)
As is her wont, White is already gearing up for another play: The Whoopi Monologues, opening at LCT’s Newhouse Theater this summer. (“We’ve made a bold choice to do it with five women,” White explained of the piece, an adaptation of Whoopi Goldberg’s iconic, self-titled one-woman show that ran at the Lyceum Theatre from 1984 to 1985. “All of us were inspired by Whoopi. She was so avant garde and fresh at the time. She crawled so we could ball.”)
Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, co-directors of Cats: The Jellicle Ball—that deliciously innovative revival of one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best-known theatrical fantasias—were also early, Levingston in a splendidly tailored, tonal gray suit by Byrd-Olivieri and Rauch in a salmon pink suit studded with twinkling midcentury brooches. “I’m not nervous, but I am kind of white-knuckling it to the Tonys because I’m so introverted,” Levingston said of navigating these last hectic days before the June 7 broadcast. “But it’s the biggest blessing ever.”
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