From a Jay-Z Cameo to a Rainy Rumble, 2024 Tony Awards Surprises and Showstoppers

The 77th Annual Tony Awards took place at the David H. Koch Theater at New York's Lincoln Center on June 16. The ceremony had its fair share of stunning highlights and quite a few surprises. Here's a selection of Broadway.com's standout moments.

A One-Time Theatrical Flop Rewrites History, Merrily

In 1981, the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Harold Prince, closed after just 16 performances and 44 previews. In an astonishing reversal, in the 2023-24 season, the musical became a certifiable hit and won the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. “Steve and George,” said the director Maria Friedman, looking heavenward during her acceptance speech. “Merrily’s popular.”

On top of that, two of the show’s three leads took home acting awards. Tony-nominated twice before, for Spring Awakening and Hamilton, Jonathan Groff won the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. He gave a funny, open-hearted speech that left his co-stars in tears.

Daniel Radcliffe, a first-time Tony nominee who has starred on Broadway four times previously (Equus in 2008, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 2011, The Cripple of Inishman in 2014 and The Lifespan of a Fact in 2018), took home the award for a featured role. "Jonathan, Lindsay [Mendez], I will miss you so much," Radcliffe said in his speech. "I don’t really have to act in this show—I just have to look at you and feel everything I want to feel. I will never have it this good again.”

Earlier in the night, longtime Sondheim orchestrator Jonathan Tunick took home only his second career Tony for his Merrily reorchestrations. (He won the first-ever Orchestrations Tony Award in 1997 for Titanic.) It was his first Tony recognizing his work on a Sondheim musical.  

Alicia Keys and Jay-Z Take Over Lincoln Center

Alicia Keys' Hell’s Kitchen had twice as much performance time as any other musical featured on the broadcast. The first half featured soon-to-be Tony-winning actresses Maleah Joi Moon and Kecia Lewis along with nominees Shoshana Bean and Brandon Victor Dixon, as well as the rest of the Broadway cast. The second was a surprise performance from Keys herself, who took to the piano bench for “Empire State of Mind.”

Moon helped her kick off the song, but the Grammy-winning R&B star eventually took over the whole auditorium, getting every Tony attendee on their feet and waving a hand in the air for New York. Then she took it up another notch. “Had to do something crazy! It’s my hometown!” she said as Jay-Z appeared on a big screen at the front of the theater. Yes, it turned out to be a pre-tape, but the crowd got the illusion of Keys joining Jay-Z in the theater lobby as he rapped the rest of the epic number. Needless to say, Hell’s Kitchen upped the 2024 Tony Awards’ star factor quite a bit.

The Greasers and the Soc's Were Ready to Rumble

As part of The Outsiders’ performance segment, Tony nominees Brody Grant, Sky Lakota-Lynch and Joshua Boone and cast sang the musical numbers “Tulsa ‘67” and “Grease Got a Hold” with plenty of angsty passion. So far, so typical. But the obligatory musical button concluding “Grease Got a Hold” gave way to something more surprising: a heaving assortment of brawny, bloodied bodies brutally beating the ever-living daylights out of one another as a hard rain fell(!) on stage at the Koch Theater. Bringing the jaw-dropping gang fight from The Outsiders to the Tonys ceremony was a canny way to stand out from the other offerings this season. It was also the perfect demonstration of the Tony-nominated choreography by Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman, Cody Spencer’s Tony-winning sound design and the Tony-winning lighting design by Brian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim—plus a tantalizing sample of probably the most thrilling coup de théâtre in a musical this season.

Tony Winner Kara Young Offers the Greatest Father's Day Gift Ever

After nominations for Clyde’s in 2022 and Cost of Living in 2023, this was the third consecutive year that Kara Young was nominated for a Tony in the Featured Actress category, for her performance in Purlie Victorious. So it was no surprise when the audience at the ceremony leapt to their feet at the announcement of her win.

Beginning her speech with, “Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!”, Young went on to thank “my ancestors, the women who I come from, the people who I come from," as well as “the great [Purlie Victorious playwright] Ossie Davis, who just posthumously elevated the American theater yet again 62 years later” and many more. She also paid tribute to “the legendary Ruby Dee who originated this role.” Concluding her speech, she said, “Thank you. This is to the vibration of the liberation of humanity.”

Stereophonic Makes Good on a Historic Season

After the will-they-won’t-they of Stereophonic’s live performance at the Tony Awards, it was an evening highlight to see the cast rock out to “Masquerade” on the stage of the David H. Koch Theater. It was all the more vindicating when the production, which came into the night with a record-breaking 13 Tony nominations, began racking up their wins—five in total. Will Brill, who took home Best Featured Actor in a Play despite being up against two of his castmates (Tom Pecinka and Eli Gelb), delivered a memorable speech, requesting his six castmates to stand and receive applause, then giving one of his biggest thanks to his therapist. Later, in his acceptance speech for Best Play, playwright David Adjmi (whose name was mispronounced in precisely the manner he predicted) thanked friends “who gave me a place to live for seven years so I could write this play.”

Back in the press room, Adjmi described his creative perfectionism as “a little bit perverse,” saying, “There’s something about virtuosity on stage that excites me. I think it’s because I’m the product of watching Michael Bennett stuff when I was a kid, and Bob Fosse, and seeing extreme virtuosity again and again on these Broadway stages when I was a little boy.” Considering Bennett and Fosse are craftsmen of great musicals, it’s only fitting that Adjmi’s Tony-winning play also get its musical moment in the spotlight.

Billy Porter Turns Technical Difficulties Into a Showstopping Moment

Billy Porter had his moment in the spotlight during the Tony Awards pre-show, accepting the Isabelle Stevenson Award for his activism in the LGBTQ+ community. But of course he still managed to make the evening’s highlight reel, turning a technical snafu into an opportunity for showmanship. He opened his speech by belting out the gospel song “I Don’t Feel Noways Tired,” singing with such confidence it took nearly 20 seconds for the crowd to realize he was actually vamping because his speech hadn’t appeared on the teleprompter. “Y’all got it?” he asked the folks manning the teleprompter. “If you don’t, I need my phone. Where’s my speech, babies?” Thus began the backstage scramble for Porter’s phone. “Somebody has the phone, somebody has the speech, let’s get it together!” By the time the phone made it to his hand, the audience was warm and ready to go. And that, as they say, is how it’s done.

Formerly Outsiders, A Strong Showing from Women Directors

For a refreshing change, the directing categories this year were dominated by women. In the musical category, The Outsiders director Danya Taymor emerged victorious (Maria Friedman, Michael Greif, Leigh Silveman and Jessica Stone were her competitors in the category) while The Outsiders itself won Best Musical. Taymor—niece of The Lion King director Julie Taymor—used her acceptance speech to relay a message to aspiring creators who may feel like outsiders:  “To all the young artists out there who want to create: What some may perceive as a weakness or a liability in you might just be your superpower. Don’t be afraid to trust your gut. Artistic risks yield rewards.”

The Who’s Pete Townshend Rocks Out with the Cast of The Who’s Tommy

In 1970, The Who performed their ambitious rock opera Tommy at Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House. (You can read more about it in our Backstory feature on the show.) On Tony night 2024, The Who's driving force Pete Townshend was back at Lincoln Center—albeit in the building next door—to perform a number with the cast of The Who’s Tommy. The musical revival took home no Tonys this year; it was only nominated for Best Musical Revival. The segment was, however, an electric showcase of work that Tonys voters overlooked, particularly Ali Louis Bourzgui’s haunted, haunting performance as the title character, and Lorin Latarro’s kinetic, inside-a-pinball-machine choreography. The presence of true rock royalty undoubtedly added to the voltage of the event, with Townshend kicking off “Pinball Wizard” on his signature Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar.

Introducing Two-Time Tony Award Winner Shaina Taub

Shaina Taub walked into the Tony Awards a first-time nominee for a project that gave the actor-singer-songwriter her Broadway debut, and walked out a two-time Tony winner. The most Tony-winning artist of the night, Taub won trophies for both the book and score of Suffs, her musical about the women’s suffrage movement, which she’s been shepherding for approximately a decade. Best Book kicked off the pre-show as the first category of the night, so Taub also has the distinction of being the inaugural 2024 Tony Award winner. She was visibly shocked by the first win and bowled over by the second. In her acceptance speech for Best Score, she said through deep breaths, “And to all of the theater kids out there watching—especially the loud little girls—go for it.”