Gratitude in Their Attitude: The 2006 Tony Award Acceptance Speeches

The joy, the tears, and the lists and lists of names. Oh, and don't forget mom and dad! To relive the acceptance speeches of the 2006 Tony Awards, read on.

"I'm totally amazed to be given this honor by the special Tony voters. I want to thank just a very few people, well a lot of people really, but the most important people I really want to thank, first off, are the backstage people. They are totally amazing. Our stage management, our wardrobe, our stage crew. Their enthusiasm and their affection for us is making our stay here so memorable. We really do feel part of New York, New York. I also want to thank my dear friends Nick Hytner, Alan Bennett, Bob Crowley, and the wonderful cast of History Boys and men, and to Bob Boyett and all our producers and the Shubert Organization. Thank you so very much for having us, and we're thrilled to be here. Thank you." —Frances de la Tour, Best Featured Actress in a Play, The History Boys

"Oh, my God, The Pajama Game is a joyous show. It was a joy to do from beginning to end, and now I get to share this joy with a bunch of brilliant and wonderful people, starting with our cast, Kelli O'Hara, Michael McKean, Megan Lawrence, Joyce [Chittick] Peter [Benson], Roz [Ryan], the brilliant Harry Connick—thank you for coming to Broadway, Harry! Our brilliant design team: Derek McLane, Marty Pakledinaz, Peter Kaczorowski, Brian Ronan and Paul Huntley. Our brilliant music team: Danny Troob, Dick Lieb, the great David Chase. All of our authors, especially Richard Adler and Peter Ackerman. All of our producers: Todd Haimes, the Roundabout, Jeffrey Richards, Jim Fuld and Scott Landis. My great assistants: Vince Pesce and Marc Bruni. Jim Carnahan, George Lane. And I especially want to stand here and tell my family how much I love them and appreciate their support—my parents, my brother, my sister and my pal Rob Ashford. Twenty years ago, we moved together to New York and were roommates. Two chorus kids, just, you know hoping to work in the theater. And now look at us! This is wild! Thank you so, so very much." — Kathleen Marshall, Best Choreography, The Pajama Game

"Ladies and gentlemen, I got on a plane from London just under two short months ago, and I am astonished to be standing before so many of you here tonight. It gives me a chance to pay tribute my distinguished acting colleagues, Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, great artists both, and my very good friend, the director Jonathan Kent. He enabled us to give life to one of the most emotionally intricate and musically perfect pieces of writing for the stage in the English language, written, unsurprisingly, by an Irishman, Brian Friel. Brian Friel's Faith Healer had its debut on Broadway over 20 years ago and was not a success. I'm really proud to be associated with this triumphant return and restoration. These are two words that occur in the play regularly and there's one other word that my character uses, that perhaps I should mention. He's a London show business manager and therefore totally unreliable and prone to wild exaggeration. But it fits the occasion, and it's the way I feel tonight: FANTASTIC! Thank you." —Ian McDiarmid, Best Featured Actor in a Play, Faith Healer

"I want to first thank my colleagues at the National Theatre for collectively producing The History Boys. They brought to it the same imagination and energy that they bring to the 20-odd shows we do each year. I want to thank Bob Boyett and Bill Haber, our passionate and imaginative producers here on Broadway, and for their generosity as well as for much else. I want to thank my stupendous National Theatre acting company, who are even more fun offstage than they are on. And, above all, I thank Alan Bennett. Over the past few years, we've done four plays and two movies together, and he is the best luck I've ever had. Thank you very much." —Nicholas Hytner, Best Director of a Play, The History Boys

"Thank you, America. This is so wonderful. This show expresses the voices of a group of writers and performers in Toronto, and we want to share this award with them. Not literally but figuratively. And also—on behalf of my agents—I just want to thank Janet Van De Graaff for marrying me in the first place." —Bob Martin, co-author, Best Book of a Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone

"We share this award with our inspirational leader and director and friend, Casey Nicholaw. Without him, we would have been deported back to Canada a long time ago. And I wish we had time to thank other people. But we really don't. If we did, I would thank Kevin and Roy, our producers, and my parents, my girlfriend Tracy... but we don't have time for that list. So instead let me just thank the American musical comedy that's been around for about a hundred years now, inspiring people, transporting them, and giving people like Bob and me lots of material to make fun of. So, we're so happy to be in this company. Thank you." —Don McKellar, co-author, Best Book of a Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone

"I'd like to thank my mom, and I'd like to thank my mom's friend Nancy for reminding me to thank my mom. Casey Nicholaw, you joined our group of weird people a year ago—me and Greg and Don and Bob—and you brought this thing to life. Thank you to you and Casey Hushion and Josh Rhodes, our cast, our band, our fantastic musical wizards—Glen Kelly and Larry Blank and Phil Reno—and our wonderful producers. And also for anybody in Toronto, who may have lived in Toronto between the years 1985 and 1995, and who received a singing telegram set to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," you can now say it was written by a Tony Award-winning songwriter." — Lisa Lambert, lyricist, Best Score of a Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone

"A very quick thank you to my parents watching this in Kelly's Cross, Prince Edward Island. I'd just like to say thanks for buying that piano 30 years ago for a hundred bucks and putting it in the basement, tearing the stairs out. It started all this for me. Thank you, very honored to be here." —Greg Morrison, composer, Best Score of a Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone

"Thank you so much. Thank you, Papa! This is for us. He died when he was 52. He emigrated to this country in 1961, the year "Sherry" broke, and he met my mom working at Saks Fifth Avenue. And, as a proud first generation American, I celebrate this story every night with my man, Tommy DeVito, who gave me the shoes to fill and the heart and soul of a king, warts and all. Nobody's perfect—this is a perfect story, though. Thanks to Des McAnuff, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, without which, we wouldn't be able to weave this intricate story in this iconic music that we get to play every night. I thank my wife, Melissa Hoff, for coming to me and saving me and being there as a mother for my children, our new baby in her womb right now—hi, baby! And Lord, I thank you for bringing me back home to Broadway and thank you for welcoming me. God bless Broadway!" —Christian Hoff, Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Jersey Boys

"Thank you, we are very grateful and we are deeply honored. But you don't get to win a Best Revival for a Tony unless you have the best possible production, which luckily we have. Superbly gifted actors in every role, wonderful designers and a brilliant director. We thank them, and we thank the staff and board of Lincoln Center Theater. But Bernie and I would not be standing up here at all if we didn't have a play not only worth reviving, but in need of reviving. Awake and Sing!, and the great, great Clifford Odets." —Andre Bishop, producer, Best Revival of a Play, Awake and Sing!

"Way back in ancient history in 1935 when Awake and Sing! had its original production by the famous Group Theatre, the Tonys hadn't even been invented yet. So this is Awake and Sing!'s first Tony, and a well deserved one it is, for this ultimate, extraordinary American play by a writer—by Clifford Odets—who with this award for the revival and his play takes his rightful place in the pantheon of great American playwrights and glorifies the extraordinary company that has brought his play back to miraculous life. Thank you very much. —Bernard Gersten, producer, Best Revival of a Play for Awake and Sing!

"Oh, my goodness gracious sakes alive! Breathe, breathe. First of all, thank you, Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff, for getting married and having this amazing bachelor party thing that has become our Drowsy Chaperone. Thank you, life, for the privilege of being on the same page as Felicia and Elisabeth and Megan and Carollee—overwhelmed, overwhelmed! Thank you to our producers, thank you to our creative team, and I must tell my director, my brilliant director Casey Nicholaw, thank you for testing me with this role of a lifetime. Because of your faith in me, my friend, I am flying. Thank you, siste. Thank you, Pat Sullivan, my wrangler. Thank you, Mark Redanty and the boys at Bauman, Redanty and Shaul. Thank you John, my husband. I love you. Thank you, T.J. and Sam, I love you. And thank you American Theatre Wing, for letting this be! Lynn and Ruby Leavel in Raleigh, North Carolina; they're the proudest parents on the earth right now. Cheers, dahling!" —Beth Leavel, Best Featured Actress in a Musical for The Drowsy Chaperone

"First of all, I'd like to thank the rest of the creative team: Sarah [Travis], Richard [Jones] and Dan [Moses Schreier], and also I would thank the costume designer and the set designer, but they've both given up the business after working with me, so it's not going to happen that way. Thank you to our wonderful producers, particularly my friend, Richard Frankel, who's a very special person in my heart. Thank you to a wonderful, wonderful cast and crew, who have made this show so—I hope—memorable to the Broadway audience. Thank you to my agent and friend Claire and to my partner, Robert, who helped me through everything. Happy anniversary, Rob. And also, thank you to somebody who I hope we all hold in a very, very special place on Broadway, and that's of course is the wonderful Stephen Sondheim. And finally, I'd like to dedicate this to all the directors and actors and designers and artists out there who knock and doors that don't get answered, and who look for a break that they think is never going to come. And I hope they will remember this moment as living proof of the fact it's never too late. Thank you very much." —John Doyle, Best Director of a Musical, Sweeney Todd

"Thank you so much. David Lindsay-Abaire wrote a play about the nature of inconsolable grief that was so understated and nuanced that it actually seemed to breathe on the page. And [director] Dan Sullivan took that play and taught it to walk and talk so perfectly that he made you believe that you were watching real life and not a play at all. I was one of the five actors lucky enough to appear in that production and that is why I'm getting this now. I want to thank David and Dan, and the four incredibly talented and all-around wonderful actors that were in the play with me, the crew, the designers, Manhattan Theatre Club and Emily Gerson-Saines, who has represented me with unfailing intelligence and unwavering devotion for the last 15 years. I cannot tell you what it means to get a Tony to a theater junkie such as myself. You have made me so, so happy tonight. Thank you so much." —Cynthia Nixon, Best Actress in a Play for Rabbit Hole

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This is astounding. I used to be a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, then I joined the Royal National Theatre company. We don't do the Royal—and I have never, in all those years, been able to address, with a single sweep of my arms, 6,000 human beings. It's very gratifying. I must offer commiserations for my fellow nominees— happen to know all of them—they're all terrific guys. And it's strange, you know, actually, this is remarkable, because without the creative talents of Alan Bennett, Nick Hytner, fantastic cast, production team, stage crew, and great producers like Bob Boyett and Bill Haber, and above all, my wife, who actually persuaded me not to quit the show. Boy, what a clever idea that seemed to be! I would simply not be here. So my thanks to them, and all of them, with all my heart, because without them, this wouldn't be possible. There's a line in the play—not actually originally Mr. Bennett's line, but he won't mind, it's somebody else's. It's one of your people's lines, a chap called Mr. Walt Whitman. He said, "The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find." So I did, and I have. Thank you. Goodnight." —Richard Griffiths, Best Actor in a Play for The History Boys

"Wow. Well, on behalf of my partners at Roundabout, Harry Wolpert and Julia Levy, our associates on this production, Jeffrey Richards, Jamie Fuld and Scott Landis, we'd like to thank, first of all, our authors, Richard Adler, the Coulter family, the Bissell family, Peter Ackerman, George Abbott, our great general manager Sydney Beers, casting director Jim Carnahan, Ann Marie Wilkins for all of her support, our incredible board of directors at the Roundabout Theatre and the Roundabout staff for making all of our productions possible, this brilliant, brilliant cast standing behind us here tonight. The best cast on Broadway." —Todd Haimes, producer, Best Revival of a Musical for The Pajama Game

"Thank you very much. When we were told we were going to Broadway, we were a bit nervous about the response, and whether the play would mean anything over here. But the audiences have been so generous and open-hearted, they've surpassed anything we could have hoped for. And on behalf of everybody to do with the play, not least the boys, who've made it as much their play as it is mine, thank you all very, very much. Thank you." —Alan Bennett, author, Best Play, The History Boys

"It's a real honor to be here with Alan Bennett. He wrote a brilliant play. Nick Hytner directed with great precision and passion and wit. It's a remarkable cast. We've had a wonderful time sharing this experience with a great team from the National Theatre, and we're particularly grateful to Nick Hytner and all the people at the National who helped to make this possible. We'd also like to thank Bill Haber and this great group of producers who joined us not only on this show, but on other presentations from the National Theatre. Thank you very much, Tony voters" —Bob Boyett, producer, Best Play, The History Boys

"Thank you. I have something else in common with Christian Hoff tonight besides this. I also lost a parent. My mother died of cystic fibrosis before I knew her. I was two years old. I don't remember her. I do remember, though, when it was just my father and me, before he met the woman who'd become the mother who raised me, before my younger sister Gillian, it was just the two of us. And he was my whole world. He was an officer in the Air Force and I always wanted to be an actor, and that put us at odds at certain points. But my girlfriend Alison shows me that my struggles were probably harder on him than they ever were on me. So I'm very, very proud to share this with my father. Dad, we're among 6,000 people tonight, but for some reason I'm remembering that first early struggle that we got through together and how it feels like it's just the two of us again. Thank you." —John Lloyd Young, Best Actor in a Musical, Jersey Boys

"Oh, my God. I've won it. I've really won it! Oh, my goodness! Thank you. Thank you so much. OK. What was I thinking about? All right, I wanted to say, first—I didn't rehearse a speech, clearly. I wanted to say, first, to the brilliant Alice Walker, for the courage. Thank you for allowing these characters to come through you and grace us all with this human powerful story that I get to experience every single night. I want to thank my cast, from the youngest, Chanty [Johnson], to the wisest, Lou [Myers], whose shoulders I stand on every night—and the reason I can stand here and accept this, because there's no way I can do this by myself. I love you. You're brilliant. To the creators of The Color Purple: our brilliant choreographer, our brilliant composers, that took the challenge to come here and tackle Broadway. It's not easy, but you came! And to everyone else—my loving family for their support, I love you, I thank you. I want to thank my mother for giving up her space here tonight to stay home and watch my daughters. Thank you, Mommy! I want to thank my daughters, who don't quite grasp the idea of what a nomination is. This is what I got now, a trophy! Thank you! And lastly, but definitely very important, I want to thank Oprah Winfrey for bringing this story not only to the country, but to the world. Thank you, Oprah. Thank you, everyone. I love you! Goodnight!" —LaChanze, Best Actress in a Musical, The Color Purple

"Thank you. On behalf of the entire most jubilant Jersey Boys family, our profound thanks for this honor. It belongs to so many; I will try and remember a few. It began with Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, who wrote this story, with Des McAnuff who found the unique way to tell it, with Sergio Trujillo, Ron Melrose, an extraordinary cast and company of actors who play it out every night, most especially our own Christian, Daniel, Bobby and John Lloyd. And of course, the actual Four Seasons, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, Nick Massey and Frankie Valli, who with Bob Crewe actually lived the story we told and created an extraordinary musical legacy in the process, and then were fool enough or brave enough to let us tell that story in a form other than a valentine. This means a great deal to us tonight, surrounded by so many familiar and friendly faces. Many of you fought in the trenches with us this season, finding your own respective dreams. We are most happy for Jersey Boys, but we thank and congratulate every single person who stepped onto a Broadway or off-Broadway stage this year, and we welcome this opportunity to celebrate it all. Thank you so very much." —Michael David, producer, Best Musical, Jersey Boys