Hadestown, a musical about a young couple’s dark trip to the Underworld, was the big winner Sunday night at the Tony Awards in New York City. The awards are given each year to Broadway productions: major plays put on in New York City. Hadestown won eight Tonys, including the top prize for a musical. Anais Mitchell’s musical is based on the ancient Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The show also won a best director award for Rachel Chavkin, the supporting actor Tony for Andre De Shields and honors for orchestration, sound and lighting design. Chavkin noted she was the only woman currently directing a Broadway musical. She called for a change in the theater world. “It is a failure of imagination,” she told the audience. The Tony for best play went to The Ferryman, a work from British writer Jez Butterworth. It is about the life a family in Northern Ireland during the religious violence there in the 1980s.
