Cole Escola Wins the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play
Cole Escola won the Tony for best actor in a play for their performance in the outlandish, ahistoric comedy 'Oh, Mary!' This is Escola's Broadway debut, and first Tony.
Escola, who is nonbinary, plays a self-indulgent, scheming Mary Todd Lincoln, who aspires to become a chanteuse. As a result, her boredom — which includes pining to perform her 'madcap medleys' of yesteryear — drives her to all kinds of antics. (With Cole prancing around in a hoop skirt, hilarity ensues.)
The New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called 'Oh, Mary!,' which Escola also wrote, 'one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.'
Directed by Sam Pinkleton, the show opened at the Lyceum Theater last summer after a sold-out and twice-extended Off Broadway run. The play has also been extended multiple times since it transferred to Broadway. (It was the first show in the Lyceum's 121-year history to gross more than $1 million in a single week.)
Escola, known for their roles in Hulu's 'Difficult People,' TBS's 'Search Party' and sketches on YouTube, came up through New York's cabaret and alt comedy scenes. The premise for 'Oh, Mary!' began with an idea, which Escola sat on for more than 12 years: 'What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?'
The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, use gendered categories for performers, and Escola agreed to be considered eligible for an award as an actor. Escola isn't the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award.
In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee became the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best leading actor in a musical, for 'Some Like It Hot,' and Alex Newell became the first out nonbinary performer to win for best featured actor in a musical for 'Shucked.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Two Paths for the Pop Star
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. When Miley Cyrus previewed her new album, Something Beautiful, for people in her orbit, they gave her funny feedback: The music was too good. Or at least, they allegedly said, it was too good to be pop. Cyrus exasperatedly relayed this story to Apple Music's Zane Lowe last month. She then listed off 'pop' musicians who were definitely good: David Bowie, Madonna, Stevie Nicks. 'Pop really gets given a bad name of, like you know, manufactured label creations,' she said. 'And that's just not what it is. That's generic, and to be honest, it's lazy.' To which parts of the stan internet cheered: Preach! Put 'Wrecking Ball' in the Louvre! Cyrus's unnamed critics seemed to view pop, like a lot of people do, as a disposable commodity. But Cyrus was articulating the—to use an ever-contested term—poptimist viewpoint, which says that just because music functions as a product for the masses doesn't mean it can't also be excellent. Now that I've heard Something Beautiful, Cyrus's ninth album, I'm starting to reconsider—and sympathize with—the feedback she received. Her new music is, and I use quotation marks advisedly here, too 'good.' It's laden with signifiers of quality that undermine the very point of the genre she's working in: pleasure. The definition of good is subjective, but society generally agrees it involves a few attributes. 'Good' things result from effort and resources being deployed in ways that prize discernment over easy gratification. Think about a plate of subtly balanced pasta (which might be yummier with a shaving of parmesan cheese) or a designer handbag (visually indistinguishable from a knockoff). But that kind of good is hard to achieve, and people who aim for it often conflate sophistication with excess (forget parmesan; add truffles). Which is how Cyrus ended up with an album that's so lavishly produced, it numbs your ears. A 32-year-old former child actor who's been making hits since 2007, Cyrus has never needed much adornment to be entertaining. She has a voice that's raspy and ferocious like a lovable cartoon creature's, and a happy-go-lucky personality to match. No particular style defines her—her albums have made a point of flitting among genres including trap, country, and hard rock—nor has she ever been a songwriter of great depth. But she's repeatedly imbued formulaic fare with a sense of geysering, authentic humanity. Now she's aiming for prestige. Winning her first ever Grammys last year—for the hit 'Flowers'—sparked an epiphany: 'I never admitted to myself how much it hurt to not be recognized for my work,' she told The New York Times. Something Beautiful sounds like it resulted from a plan to win more recognition. It features contributions from many critically acclaimed indie musicians, such as Brittany Howard from Alabama Shakes and Adam Granduciel from the War on Drugs. It's been marketed as an opus in the vein of Pink Floyd's The Wall; it will, Cyrus has said, 'medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music.' [Read: The freakish powers of Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey] If this is medicine, it's certainly pungent. The album is piled high with pulsating orchestration (think Philip Glass more than Gustav Mahler), progressive-rock guitar noodling, and multitrack disco harmonies, all echoing with heavenly reverb. Much of this detail work is indeed something beautiful, like fine gold threading on a gown. Some of it is even outstanding, such as the layered gospel vocals of 'Reborn.' But again and again, the listener is left wondering why a song has become overtaken by a swarm of instruments buzzing and zipping like bees. The cumulative effect of so much sound is a sense of sheer heaviness. Cyrus and her collaborators are writing in the Diane Warren mode, as if to soundtrack one last makeout before asteroids pummel the Earth. Many of the melodies are sturdy, and you might find yourself verklempt at the epic heartache of 'More to Lose' and 'Golden Burning Sun.' But the singing—while impassioned and textured—isn't really interacting with the instrumentation in a dynamic way. And the music's ambitious veneer invites a kind of scrutiny that her lyrics can't sustain (one mangled metaphor: 'My tears are streamin' like our favorite show tonight'). The listener might be impressed, even awed, by Cyrus's effort—but deep down, they'll know there's something better they could be listening to. All I've wanted to do lately is listen to Addison Rae. This is a surprise for a few reasons. One is that Rae, 24, is a TikTok dancer who became famous six years ago for doing bodyrolls in sweatpants while smiling blankly at the camera. She then released a fun but generic EP that reused one old Lady Gaga demo and imitated the pop-punk-inflected sound of Millennial child actors turned singers: Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, early Cyrus. This did not suggest anything very exciting about what kind of culture would result from short-form video becoming our primary star-making machine. But Rae's debut album, Addison, out this past Friday, isn't bland at all. In fact, I really didn't expect that the first great TikTok-to-pop album would evoke Aphex Twin and other electronic experimentalists such as Timbaland, Björk, and Portishead. The production's breakbeats, digital glitches, and creaking synthesizers summon an alien landscape for Rae, an avatar of popular-girl normalcy, to explore. The sound is on trend with Gen Z's '90s and Y2K nostalgia—pining for a time when technology seemed exciting rather than oppressive—and it calls back to Madonna's run of playful futurism from 1992's Erotica to 2005's Confessions on the Dance Floor. But it's pulled off in an ingenious way that conveys youthful possibility and delivers some really fresh bangers. Rae's prime collaborators are Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, two relatively unknown women working in a field—pop production—that's largely dominated by men whose tricks are starting to become all too familiar. The duo trained under the super-producer Max Martin, whose notion of 'melodic math' insists that every note serves the purpose of catchiness. But Addison's melodies, while effective, don't quite deliver quite as much a sugar rush. The album's real appeal lies in harmony and rhythm: the interplay of melancholic organ lines, curiously lopsided bass grooves, vocals stacked in tangy intervals, and key changes that seem to reverse the flow of time. These songs aren't exactly avant garde, but they were clearly made with the understanding of how strangeness can invite replayability. As for Rae, she mostly retains the simple allure that defined her social-media stardom, mixing angelic breathiness with kitschy squeals and spoken word. Her best lyrics reframe clichés about being hot and having fun, like when she distills a night on the dance floor into four words: 'Kick drum, chew gum.' But generally, the more you notice what she's saying, the worse the music gets; a mention of her parents' divorce in 'Headphones' adds a hard surface to a song that's otherwise transcendently soupy. Thankfully, such stabs at profundity are rare. Rae seems happy to blend in, employing herself as an ingredient in a greater whole. Being an ingredient might seem like a bad thing, but it's refreshing these days. Pop stars are taken very seriously of late—in part because the internet gives their fans a loud platform to champion them, and in part because pop is, well, really getting more serious. Inspired by figures such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, Gen Z's emerging icons—Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish among them—position themselves as complex, uncompromising auteurs. When that approach works, it's as thrilling as can be. When it doesn't, you get the ponderousness of Cyrus's new album. Rae is throwing back to a time when pop didn't insist on its own importance quite so much, and in doing so, she's drawing attention to the craftsmanship that chasing a hit requires. Her mesmerizing music videos flaunt both her dancing abilities and her aesthetic tastes, the latter of which seem as finely developed as a fashion editor's. But the most important audiovisual accompaniments to this album are the clips she, Anderfjärd, and Kloser posted from their time in the studio. Messing around with keyboards and humming top lines, these three women seem to have developed a strong creative flow together. The only statement that this album is making is in execution: Good pop is good music. *Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: James Devaney / GC Images / Getty; Aeon / GC Images / Getty; XNY / Star Max / GC Images / Getty; Emma McIntyre / Getty; Jemal Countess / Getty; XNY / Star Max / GC Images / Getty; Kevin Winter / Getty; Bryan Bedder / Getty; Cristina Gaidau / Getty. Article originally published at The Atlantic
27 minutes ago
How 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' seeded a music nonprofit supporting the songwriters of tomorrow
NEW YORK -- It's sung every summer in baseball stadiums around the United States. But the impact of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' goes much further than simply getting fans out of their seats for the 7th-inning stretch. More than a century after Jack Norworth penned the lyrics, a nonprofit founded with the song's royalties is celebrating 50 years of supporting young musicians — including the talent behind some of today's most popular musicals. The ASCAP Foundation, the charitable arm for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, was established in 1975 after Norworth's estate left a bequest of the licensing payments for baseball's unofficial anthem and his other hits. 'Just as all music begins with a song, the ASCAP Foundation began with a song,' said Paul Williams, the group's president and a composer-lyricist whose award-winning career includes 'Rainbow Connection.' The organization provides money, lessons and mentorship at all career stages in an industry where that support is badly needed by artists who often toil for years working other gigs while trying to get their music before the right ears. To reach its semicentennial, however, the foundation has had to identify new funding streams and reinvent programming. 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' written in 1908, has since entered the public domain and no longer generates revenue. The foundation nowadays relies on a mix of philanthropies, corporate sponsors and general public donations. The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation is a longtime backer and storied New York law firm Paul Weiss is another sponsor. And, according to Williams, 'there's not a lot of stingy songwriters out there.' The late Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, as well as Herb Alpert, are among those with named scholarships and awards. Williams said other bequests, which are charitable gifts left through a will, have come from 'Hello, Dolly!' composer-lyricist Jerry Herman and 'Tea for Two' lyricist Irving Ceasar. 'It's really a way of making a mark on the world and extending their values forward,' fundraising coach Claire Axelrad said of bequests, which she added have consistently made up about one-tenth of charitable gifts. With dwindling arts funding and millions of children reportedly going without music education, the ASCAP Foundation is also trying to reach underserved communities. Leaders count nearly 60,000 K-12 students who participated in last year's programs. They help teach guitar to New York summer campers and bring students to free Broadway-caliber productions. Youth are learning to play the djembe, a drum originally from West Africa, through a collaboration with urban farming nonprofit Harlem Grown. Tax filings show the foundation gave away more than $325,000 in grants for scholarships, fellowships and cash awards in 2023. Award-winning songwriter Emily Bear, who co-wrote the soundtrack for Disney's 'Moana 2,' said the foundation took her 'very seriously" when she was a five-year-old prodigy receiving its young composer award. 'That kind of validation at that kind of age means so much when you're just a little girl with very big dreams and you're in a room full of people that you idolize," she said. Composer Stephen Schwartz, who was honored this week with the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award during a June 10 fundraiser at Tony winner Adam Guettel's Manhattan home, said the nonprofit is filling gaps as the government 'supports the arts less and less.' This April also marked the third year that Schwartz has hosted the foundation's two-day Musical Theatre Fest in Los Angeles. The location allows participants to get feedback from prominent guests and connect with Hollywood studios — one way the foundation is trying to stay relevant by serving the renewed interest in musicals for television and film screens. It's emblematic of the mentorship younger composers say Schwartz — a Broadway icon whose hits include 'Godspell,' 'Pippin' and 'Wicked' — has offered to emerging artists over the years. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songwriting duo behind 'Dear Evan Hansen,' credited the ASCAP Foundation for 'cementing' their connection with Schwartz. Pasek said such close proximity to a hero, who then became a "living, breathing person who gives you advice,' made the profession 'more plausible.' 'Typically, you're working on projects on a wing and a prayer and hoping that someday it reaches the stage,' Paul said. "So, an organization like the ASCAP Foundation breathing life into not just your work, but your pocketbooks, is a huge, huge support.' Schwartz said it was 'scary and bewildering' when he first started out without any connections. He sees an important role for himself as someone who can 'ease the way a bit' to help newcomers' 'talents flourish earlier and more completely.' There's also another motivation. 'It's slightly selfish because I get to see good work and enjoy it,' Schwartz added. ___
News24
an hour ago
- News24
‘That twin effect?' SA's amapiano DJ duo TxC stun at BET Awards in hip-linked gowns
TxC taking a selfie before being interviewed by BET International on the red carpet. Bethany Grenald Be among those who shape the future with knowledge. Uncover exclusive stories that captivate your mind and heart with our FREE 14-day subscription trial. Dive into a world of inspiration, learning, and empowerment. You can only trial once. Start your FREE trial now Show Comments ()
