By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Beth Leavel starred in a 1978 production of "Hello, Dolly!" while a student at UNCG.
A UNCG alum could walk away with Broadway's top honor, the Tony Award.
Beth Leavel, who graduated from UNCG in 1980 with an MFA in acting, is nominated for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in “The Drowsy Chaperone.” CBS will televise the June 11 awards ceremony live from New York’s Radio City Music Hall at 8 p.m.
“Chaperone,” also in the running for the Best Musical Tony, is billed as “a musical within a comedy.” It revolves around a musical theater fan whose living room is transformed into a Broadway stage as he listens to a cast album of a 1920s-era show.
Leavel has the title role in “Chaperone,” a character described by the online theater news service Playbill.com as a cigarette puffing, martini sipping throwback to Rosalind Russell’s Auntie Mame.
“She's basically an Auntie Mame character who is negligent in her duties as a chaperone, so all sorts of madness ensues,” Don McKellar, who co-wrote the show’s libretto with Bob Martin, told Playbill.com.
Leavel studied old films of the 1920s to develop her character.
“I just pulled it out of my acting ‘whatever,’” she told Playbill.com. “It's like, ‘Oh, there she is,’ and the audience kind of helped inform that. They would tell me what worked and what didn't work.”
Leavel is appearing in "The Drowsy Chaperone" on Broadway.
The role has already netted her a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award and an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award. Her other Broadway roles have included Dorothy Brock in a revival of “42nd Street” and Tess in “Crazy for You.” She is perhaps best remembered at UNCG for her 1978 performance as Dolly Levi, the lead in UNCG Theatre’s production of the musical blockbuster “Hello, Dolly!”
Productions opening in any of the 39 eligible Broadway theaters during the season are eligible for the Tony. Nominees are selected by an independent committee of theatrical professionals appointed by the Tony Awards Administration Committee.
Named for Antoinette “Tony” Perry, an actress, director, producer and leader of the American Theatre Wing who had recently died, the Tony Awards celebrate excellence in theater. The awards debuted at the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947.
