Winnipegger earns Tony for leading role in Broadway production of Ragtime

Winnipeg’s Joshua Henry was on top of the musical theatre world Sunday at Radio City Music Hall, winning the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role for his performance in the Broadway revival of Ragtime.

Henry, whose family moved from Manitoba to Florida when he was a toddler, had previously been nominated for three of the top theatrical honours, given out annually in New York City since 1947.

“It is an honour to play this role — Coalhouse Walker, Jr. — a Black musician whose art led him to his love, and to his dream,” Henry said during his acceptance speech.

“And even in the face of pain and tragedy, he found a way to be heard. Every artist in this room, every artist at home, fight-fight-fight to be heard.”

Ragtime is an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel of historical fiction, which put fictionalized characters in conversation with historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford and Emma Goldman.

Originally staged in 1996 in Toronto, before making the leap to Broadway in 1998 with a cast featuring Tony winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and an 11-year-old Lea Michele, Ragtime — with a book by Terrence McNally and songwriting by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty — is a sweeping epic of intersecting pursuits of the American Dream at the turn of the 20th century.

Directed by Lear deBessonet, Ragtime was awarded Sunday as the best revival of a musical, beating out The Rocky Horror Show and Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Henry, who previously played Aaron Burr in the national touring production of Hamilton, won out over a field of nominees that included his co-star Brandon Uranowitz. Their co-star, the Hamilton, Ont.-born Caissie Levy, who appeared as Mother, won the Tony for best leading actress in a musical.

These national connections give the American Dream tale a distinctly Canadian and migratory undertone, says Winnipeg musical theatre actor and educator Donna Fletcher.

“The great thing about (Joshua’s win) is that it shows you can come from anywhere, and if you pursue your craft, work hard, are a good person and be dedicated, you can win a Tony — you can get to Broadway,” says Fletcher, who’s currently appearing as Mother Superior in Drayton Entertainment’s run of Sister Act in Ontario.

“Since the early 1900s, it’s been a place of aspiration to pursue your dream.”

Fletcher didn’t watch the awards show live, but lists off a number of Manitoban artists who have taken the stage during the telecast over the years, including Samantha Hill, Jaz Sealey and Catherine Wreford, who, at age 20, performed with the cast of 42nd Street during the Tony’s opening number in 2002.

Other Winnipeg connections to the Tony Awards — named in 1947 for American Theatre Wing leader Antoinette Perry — exist as stellar precedent.

In 1962, a 19-year-old Barbra Streisand made her Broadway debut in the garment-industry send-up I Can Get It For You Wholesale, playing Elliot Gould’s character’s secretary, Yetta Tessye Marmelstein. For that featured role as part of a cast that included Winnipeg-born, Academy Award-nominated actor Jack Kruschen, Streisand earned her first of two Tony nominations.

Born in St. Boniface, Len Cariou — a founding member of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre who was a member of the chorus of Rainbow Stage’s production of Damn Yankees in 1959 — has been nominated three times for best actor in a musical, winning in 1979 as the original demon barber of Fleet Street in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

Last year, Winnipeg-born, New York-based Raffie Rosenberg — whose first producing credits came at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival — was on the producing team for Oh, Mary!, a queer spoof of the life of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln created by performer Cole Escola.

Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, receiving two Tonys last year for lead performer Escola and director Sam Pinkleton, Oh, Mary — which has featured Escola, Simu Liu, Kumail Nanjiani, Titus Burgess and John Cameron Mitchell — is currently running at New York’s Lyceum Theatre with SNL alum Maya Rudolph in the lead role.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman

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