Latest news with #musicaltheater
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
And that's what you missed: Every 'Glee' star who's won a Tony Award
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images; Bruce Glikas/WireImage; Marsha Bernstein/WWD via Getty Images Jonathan Groff; Alex Newell; Darren Criss The Glee cast featured some of the most talented musical theater performers to ever grace the TV screen. With an iconic run between 2009 and 2015, Glee was centered on group of young performers as the members of a high school Glee Club in Lima, Ohio. The show was all about how much talent and potential these high schoolers had, dreaming up big futures for many of them. In the series finale of Glee, the character of Rachel (Lea Michele) goes on to win her first Tony Award, which did set the tone for what fans could expect from the careers of some of the stars. The show also featured numerous guest stars, including Broadway stars and musical theater legends. Many of those stars had Tony Awards before appearing on the show, but have also continued to produce great work that earns them even more nominations. As of 2025, 12 performers who played characters on Glee have Tony Awards, including five members of the New Directions. Scroll through to discover which cast members over the years have won Tony Awards — starting with the latest addition to this list! Darren Criss joined the Glee cast in season 2 as Blaine Anderson, a member of the glee club at a rival all-boys school called Dalton Academy. Eventually, he transferred to William McKinley High to join the New Directions and started dating Kurt. In 2025, Criss won a Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Maybe Happy Ending. Jonathan Groff starred in Glee as Jesse St. James, a rival to the New Directions and on-again-off-again boyfriend to Rachel. Groff was first nominated for a Tony for his role as Melchior in Spring Awakening in 2007. Lea Michele — Groff's love interest in that musical and eventual Glee costar as well — was not nominated, alas. Groff was then nominated again for playing King George III in Hamilton, and eventually won his first Tony for starring in Merrily We Roll Along in 2024. After appearing on The Glee Project, Alex Newell joined the season 3 cast of Glee as trans student Unique Adams, and subsequently joined the New Directions in season 4. In 2023, Newell originated the role of Lulu in the Broadway musical Shucked and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for the role. Along with J. Harrison Ghee, who won for Some Like It Hot that same night, Newell became the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony. Ali Stroker is another person who went from The Glee Project reality competition series to getting cast on Glee. In 2016, Stroker won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her role as Ado Annie in Oklahoma!. She was the first wheelchair user to win a Tony Award for acting. Jenna Ushkowitz was a member of the original New Directions as the character Tina Cohen-Chang, and stayed on the show until it ended. Over the years, Ushkowitz has won two Tony Awards as a producer: One trophy for Best Revival of a Musical, for Once On This Island, in 2018, and another trophy for Best Play, for The Inheritance, in 2020. Brian Stokes Mitchell has been nominated for four Tonys overall, and won for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Fred Graham/Petruchio in Kiss Me, Kate in 2000. On Glee, the actor played LeRoy Berry, one of Rachel's gay dads. Broadway legend Kristin Chenoweth won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1999. She's been nominated for two other Tonys for her roles as Glinda in Wicked and Lily Garland in On the Twentieth Century. On Glee, she played April Rhodes, a washed-up former glee club singer who never graduated from high school and joins the New Directions as an adult. Idina Menzel is another massive Broadway legend who's appeared on Glee. On the show, Menzel played Rachel's birth mom, Shelby Corcoran. She was nominated for her first Tony in 1996 for playing Maureen in Rent, and then won for originating the role of Elphaba in Wicked (2004). Then years later, in 2014, Menzel and was nominated again for If/Then. On Glee, EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg played Carmen Tibideaux, the Dean of Vocal Performance and Song Interpretation at NYADA, the performing arts school that Rachel and Kurt attend after graduating from high school. In real life, she's been nominated for three Tonys as a producer, winning in 2002 for Best Musical for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Neil Patrick Harris appeared in one episode of Glee as Bryan Ryan, a former high school rival of Will Schuester's who's now a board member of Lima Public Schools and is seeking to defund the glee club. He won a Tony in 2014 for Best Actor in a Musical for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Legendary actor and singer Carol Burnett played Doris Sylvester on Glee — none other than Sue Sylvester's mother! After being nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for Once Upon a Mattress in 1960 and Best Actress in a Play in 1996 for Moon Over Buffalo, Burnett won a Special Tony Award in 1969. Helen Mirren played the inner voice of Becky Jackson, a member of the Cheerios who had Down syndrome, on Glee. Over the years, Mirren has been nominated for three Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play. In 2015, the actress won for her performance in The Audience.
CBS News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Nicole Scherzinger wins 2025 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in "Sunset Blvd"
Nicole Scherzinger won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as Norma Desmond in "Sunset Blvd." The pop star has conquered the bright lights and wowed audiences with her Broadway debut. "I'm very blessed. I'm blessed, because my prayers have been answered," Scherzinger told CBS News New York's Kristine Johnson in a recent interview ahead of the award show. "I feel like I'm living that dream right now with this remarkable, life-changing opportunity." Scherzinger said she had a successful career before this role came her way, but it wasn't quite what she wanted. "I'm so grateful for my time with all my groups. I was in a rock group called Days of the New, I was in a pop group called Eden's Crush, and then my group The Pussycat Dolls, that whole whirlwind. I'm so proud of the music that we created and the work that we did touring around the world," she said. "A lot of people don't realize I grew up a lover of theater and musical theater and I went to a youth performing arts high school. So this was my safe space that I found my kind, as I call it, where I felt like I belonged," she continued. "I've never experienced a love like that before" Scherzinger plays Norma Desmond, an actress coming face-to-face with fading fame. "One of the biggest connections, I think, is something that goes through my mind quite often when I'm on stage as Norma is saying, 'Where did the time go?' And I feel like we can all relate to that," she told Johnson. "You blink, and a day goes by. You blink, a year goes by. You blink, a decade goes by. And that is real... And you wake up and you're 46, and you are not 26 anymore. So having to deal with the reality of time -- fleeting and it waits for no one." She said she never expected to star on Broadway and has nothing but praise for the theater community that welcomed her to the stage. "I feel like there's no competition. There's just room for everyone and to celebrate everyone, and it's so inclusive and it is so beautiful. And I feel like the people in this community, they champion you and lift you up, and I've never experienced a love like that before," she said. "Sunset Blvd" wins Best Revival of a Musical This is a new look for "Sunset Blvd." Unlike the original 1994 production and the 1997 revival starring Glenn Close, in this version, Scherzinger is barefoot and wears only a black slip dress. "That's why working with Jamie Lloyd is such a dream for me, because what Jamie does and the brilliance about him is that he puts no boundaries on you. And even though it seems so empty, the stage with no distractions, it's that much fuller," said Scherzinger. The production had seven Tony nominations, including Lloyd for Best Director of a Musical. It took home top honors for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Lighting Design. When asked what's next for her, Scherzinger replied, "8 p.m. tonight is what's next." "I've got to live in the moment -- these performances. It's important for me to make every performance like it's my opening night and my closing night," she said. "This role has changed my life." She's also looking forward to her performance at Carnegie Hall in October, and before that, she's getting married.
CTV News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Silver Stars in final rehearsals for 40th production, 'Agent Quest'
Calgary Watch The Silver Stars Musical Review Society, which started up in the '90s and is heading into its 40th production, is proving age is no deterrent to acting.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Modern Family' Star Announces Surprising Career Pivot
Modern Family alum , who was just four years old when she landed the fan-favorite role of Lily Tucker-Pritchett, is making a major career pivot five years after the comedy series went off the air. The young actress, now 17, has featured in a variety of musical theater productions since then, as she documents on her TikTok account, and now she's announced another new venture: a brand new original song called "Telephones and Traffic," out this Friday, May 23. Anderson-Emmons took to the social media platform multiple times this week to tease the new track, sharing a preview of the song and music video that fans are already calling "ethereal." "Such a dreamy song 💭✨ love it!" one fan complimented in the comments, as another called the tone "majestic" and someone else declared, "this is ethereal 💖." "THIS IS SO HEAVENLY," someone else exclaimed. Her singing was praised as "amazing," with one fan calling her voice " warm honey." "I think this is going to be my new fav song!!" someone even boldly declared. Others felt it was the perfect fit for the Hunger Games series—specifically to play during the credits of the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping. "Telephones and Traffic" follows a single called "Maps," which was released last year.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Charles Strouse, Composer of ‘Annie' and ‘Bye Bye Birdie,' Dies at 96
Charles Strouse, an accidental Broadway composer whose work — including hits like 'Annie' and 'Bye Bye Birdie' — earned him three Tony Awards, a Grammy and an Emmy, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 96. His death was confirmed by Jim Byk, a spokesman for the family. Mr. Strouse had more than a dozen Broadway shows to his credit and composed some of the most enduring musical theater numbers of his era: 'Put On a Happy Face' and 'Kids (What's the Matter With Kids Today?)' from 'Bye Bye Birdie,' which opened in 1960 and featured lyrics by his frequent collaborator Lee Adams; 'But Alive' from 'Applause' (1970), a musical adaptation of 'All About Eve' starring Lauren Bacall, with lyrics by Mr. Adams; and 'Tomorrow' and 'It's the Hard-Knock Life' from 'Annie' (1977), with lyrics by Martin Charnin. All three shows earned Tonys for Mr. Strouse — 'Birdie' and 'Applause' for best musical and 'Annie' for best original score. Both 'Birdie' and 'Annie' were made into hit movies. Mr. Strouse's music has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Duke Ellington and Jay-Z, who sampled the corresponding number from Broadway's 'Annie' on his 1998 rap single 'Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).' Some of Mr. Strouse's numbers became so ubiquitous that they seemed revered and reviled by the public in equal measure. Each response in its own way was a badge of honor. There was the time, for instance, that a stranger accosted Mr. Strouse at a party. 'If I have to hear my daughter sing 'Tomorrow' one more time,' he thundered, 'I'm going to kill myself — and you!' Mr. Strouse's other Broadway musicals included 'All American' (1962), starring Ray Bolger, with a book by Mel Brooks; 'Golden Boy' (1964), starring Sammy Davis Jr.; 'It's a Bird … It's a Plane … It's Superman' (1966), an adaptation of the comic book written by Robert Benton (who died this week) and David Newman, starring Jack Cassidy, with Bon Holiday in the title role; and 'Mayor' (1985), an adaptation of the memoirs of Mayor Edward I. Koch, for which Mr. Strouse wrote both music and lyrics. He also wrote scores for 'Bonnie and Clyde' (1967), 'The Night They Raided Minsky's' (1968) and other films. For television, he composed the music for 'Those Were the Days,' the opening theme of Norman Lear's groundbreaking sitcom 'All in the Family,' with lyrics by Mr. Adams. (It is Mr. Strouse's piano playing that is heard on the soundtrack as Archie and Edith Bunker sing the song on camera.) Mr. Strouse's résumé is all the more noteworthy in that, trained under such eminences as Nadia Boulanger, David Diamond and Aaron Copland, he had fully intended to be a composer of concert music. The son of Ira Strouse, a traveling salesman, and Ethel (Newman) Strouse, a homemaker and amateur pianist, Charles Louis Strouse, familiarly known as Buddy, was born in New York City on June 7, 1928, and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He realized early, he said, that he would be obliged to lighten his dark household with his academic and musical achievements. His father was plagued by a range of serious health problems; his mother, chronically depressed, often threatened suicide and eventually spent more than two years in a psychiatric hospital. Among the few truly happy times the Strouses enjoyed as a family, Mr. Strouse recalled in his 2008 memoir, 'Put On a Happy Face,' were when they gathered around the piano to sing the latest popular standards as his mother played. Years later, when it came time for Mr. Lear to devise the credit sequence for 'All in the Family,' Mr. Strouse gave him the idea of having its stars, Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton, seated at the piano in a similar tableau. Charles took up the piano at 10, and at 15, after graduating from what was then Townsend Harris Hall, a Manhattan public high school, entered the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. He majored in composition and earned a bachelor's degree there in 1947. 'The direction of a melodic line, the stringency and resolution of a harmony — they were riddles to me that I wanted to spend my whole life solving,' Mr. Strouse wrote in his memoir. Returning to Manhattan, he studied privately with Mr. Diamond and spent several summers working with Mr. Copland at Tanglewood. In 1950, he received a scholarship to study in Paris with Ms. Boulanger, whose students had included some of the most distinguished composers of the 20th century. After he had worked with her for a time, Ms. Boulanger informed Mr. Strouse that he had a talent for light music. He was crushed, he recalled, until she told him that 'to make someone forget illness and suffering is also a calling.' It was as if, Mr. Strouse later wrote, she had been able to peer directly into his childhood home. By that time, fate had already intervened in the person of Mr. Adams, whom Mr. Strouse had met at a party in late 1949. Although Mr. Strouse had little interest in musical theater then, the two made an offhand vow to collaborate. 'I didn't expect much to come out of it,' Mr. Strouse later said. On returning from Paris to New York, Mr. Strouse made ends meet by playing piano wherever he could: for dance rehearsals; in strip clubs ('Continuous Stripping Plus Buddy Strouse and His Band,' an advertisement read); and as an accompanist for the actress and singer Butterfly McQueen on a concert tour of the South. He also worked briefly for Fox Movietone News, writing background music for newsreels. His first significant work as a composer of popular songs came in 1952, when he joined Mr. Adams at Green Mansions, a summer resort in the Adirondacks. The resort was famed for its Saturday-night revues, for which Mr. Strouse and Mr. Adams wrote original songs. 'Suddenly,' Mr. Strouse recalled, 'people were walking out of the theater humming my tunes.' The number that became 'Put On a Happy Face' had its origins in one of their Green Mansions shows. In the coming years, the pair contributed songs to several well-received Off Broadway revues, including 'The Littlest Revue,' which opened in 1956 and starred Charlotte Rae, Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes. Then, in the late 1950s, along came 'Birdie.' To hear Mr. Strouse tell it, the show's premise was preposterous. Originally titled 'Let's Go Steady,' it centered on teenagers — not the leather-jacketed urban toughs that since 1957 had been tearing up Broadway in 'West Side Story,' but pubescents of the poodle-skirted type, cut from clean, anodyne Middle American cloth. Based on the recent history of Elvis Presley, lately United States Army Private 53310761, the proposed musical followed the fortunes of a fictional pop star, Conrad Birdie — a play on the name of the country singer Conway Twitty, himself a rock 'n' roll star at the time — and his legions of adoring fans as he decamped for service. The show hoped to capitalize on the current craze for rock 'n' roll. But by his own admission, Mr. Strouse knew little of rock 'n' roll and cared for it even less. To make matters worse, the cast featured a bevy of relative unknowns, among them the nightclub singer Dick Gautier as Conrad and, as Conrad's manager, a little-heralded actor named Dick Van Dyke. Dubious but also impecunious, Mr. Strouse and Mr. Adams signed on. Over the next two years, while the fledgling 'Birdie' was making the rounds of backers' auditions, Mr. Strouse worked as an assistant to Frank Loesser, the titan who had written music and lyrics for 'Guys and Dolls,' among other hits. 'Bye Bye Birdie' opened on Broadway on April 14, 1960. When someone read him the review by Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times the next day, Mr. Strouse fainted. It was not from joy. 'As a production,' Mr. Atkinson had written, ''Bye Bye Birdie' is neither fish, fowl nor good musical comedy.' Mercifully, other New York papers (the city was then glorious home to seven English-language dailies) were kinder. The show ran for 607 performances — a more-than-respectable tally at the time. Mr. Strouse would outdo that figure with 'Applause,' which starred Len Cariou, Penny Fuller and Bonnie Franklin and ran for 896 performances. He outdid 'Applause' with 'Annie,' based on the venerable comic strip 'Little Orphan Annie' and starring Andrea McArdle in the title role and Dorothy Loudon as her nemesis, Miss Hannigan; it ran for 2,377. Not all of Mr. Strouse's ventures were successful. 'Bring Back Birdie,' a 1981 sequel, closed on Broadway after four performances. Two 'Annie' sequels, 'Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge' and 'Annie Warbucks,' closed out of town before reaching Broadway. The 1991 musical 'Nick & Nora,' with a book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. and a cast featuring Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason as Dashiell Hammett's detectives Nick and Nora Charles, played just nine Broadway performances. Such are the vagaries of Broadway that even when Mr. Strouse's music was critically praised, it was not always enough to sustain a show. That was the case with 'Rags,' his 1986 musical about Jewish immigrants in early-20th-century New York, with a book by Joseph Stein and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Starring the operatic soprano Teresa Stratas, it closed after four performances. 'The 'Rags' that might have been,' Frank Rich lamented in his review in The Times, 'is best heard in Mr. Strouse's score.' Mr. Strouse's honors included a Grammy Award for the 'Annie' cast album; an Emmy, with Mr. Adams, for a 1995 television production of 'Bye Bye Birdie' starring Jason Alexander; and the Richard Rodgers Award for lifetime achievement from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He was the founder, in 1979, of the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop, which trains aspiring composers and lyricists. Mr. Strouse's survivors include his children, Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria and William Strouse, as well as eight grandchildren. His wife, Barbara Siman, a choreographer, died in 2023 after 61 years of marriage. Throughout his long, successful career, Mr. Strouse never lost sight of the myriad anxieties that attend his calling. He was perhaps never more keenly aware of them than in March 1960, when 'Bye Bye Birdie' opened in Philadelphia for its pre-Broadway tryout. As the curtain rose, Mr. Strouse, Mr. Adams and Michael Stewart, who wrote the book, paced the lobby of the theater like expectant fathers. When the curtain rang down, to what Mr. Strouse considered 'minimal applause,' he could bear it no longer. He made for a broom closet under the lobby's grand staircase. 'I was so nervous I went to hide,' Mr. Strouse told The Times in 2009. 'I opened the door and heard a growl. It was Mike. He was already in there.'
