As previously reported, The Boy From Oz star — and 2004 Tony nominee — Hugh Jackman will host the annual awards, which will be broadcast live on CBS-TV, 8-11 PM ET. Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman and Boy From Oz lyricist Carole Bayer Sager will be among the presenters for the evening, which will include a tribute to classic Broadway musicals performed by Tony Bennett and Mary J. Blige. The former is scheduled to sing 42nd Street's "Lullaby of Broadway" and the latter A Chorus Line's "What I Did for Love."
Presenters for the June 6 ceremony at Radio City Music Hall will also include Sean Combs, currently on Broadway in the Tony-nominated revival of A Raisin in the Sun; fellow rapper LL Cool J; 2004 Tony nominee Anne Heche; 2003 Tony winner Jane Krakowski; film star Scarlett Johansson; recent Producers star Martin Short; London actress Helen Mirren; "Six Feet Under"'s Peter Krause; two-time Tony winner Nathan Lane; theatre legend Chita Rivera; "Sex and the City" actress Sarah Jessica Parker; Tony winner and Wicked co-star Joel Grey; Sight Unseen's Laura Linney; stage and screen veteran John Lithgow; Movin' Out Tony winner Billy Joel; two-time Tony winner and current Gypsy star Bernadette Peters; "Saturday Night Live" star Jimmy Fallon; Kiss Me, Kate's Brian Stokes Mitchell; current Tony nominee Phylicia Rashad; stage and film star Sigourney Weaver; former Renter and recent Wicked fill-in Taye Diggs; Hairspray's Marissa Jaret Winokur; film actor Ethan Hawke; and famed actor Patrick Stewart.
The telecast will also include performances from the four nominated Best Musicals — Avenue Q, The Boy From Oz, Wicked and Caroline, or Change — as well as three of the four nominated Best Revivals of a Musical — Assassins, Fiddler on the Roof and Wonderful Town. Big River has been denied the chance to perform on the telecast because it is no longer running on Broadway.
Avenue Q, the hilarious yet touching puppet-friendly musical, will offer an abridged version of their opening number, "It Sucks to Be Me." The Tony-nominated revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins will perform that show's finale, "Everybody's Got the Right." Tonya Pinkins, nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, will perform her Caroline, or Change show-stopper, "Lot's Wife." Two-time Tony Award winner Donna Murphy, again nominated this season, will lead the Wonderful Town company in the Leonard Bernstein-Adolph Green-Betty Comden song, "Swing." Wicked co-nominees Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth will perform the show's first act finale, "Defying Gravity.' The company of Fiddler on the Roof — led by the Tony-nominated Alfred Molina — will perform "Tradition," and host Jackman will perform The Boy From Oz's "Not the Boy Next Door."
The telecast will also include moments from the Best Play nominees (Anna in the Tropics, Frozen, I Am My Own Wife and The Retreat from Moscow) and Best Revival of a Play nominees (Henry IV, Jumpers, King Lear and A Raisin in the Sun.) The Antoinette Perry "Tony" Award is bestowed annually for distinguished achievement in the theatre. For more information about the awards, visit www.tonys.org.
