2010 Tony Awards: Katie Finneran Wins 'Featured Actress in a Musical'

The American Theatre Wing's 64th Annual Antoinette Perry "Tony"® Awards were held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 13, 2010 and broadcast on the CBS Television Network. For more information visit tonyawards.com.

Nominations in 26 competitive categories for the American Theatre Wing's 64th Annual Antoinette Perry "Tony"® Awards were announced on May 4, 2010 by Broadway Star Lea Michele and Tony Award Nominee Jeff Daniels.

The Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards are bestowed annually on theatre professionals for distinguished achievement. The Tony is one of the most coveted awards in the entertainment industry and the annual telecast is considered one of the most prestigious programs on television.

To view the complete list of 2010 Tony Award winners, click here.

BroadwayWorld Congratulates
Katie Finneran
2010 Tony Award Winner
'Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical'

Katie Finneran ("Marge MacDougall" in Promises, Promises) Katie Finneran won Tony®, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for her performance in Noises Off. She is currently starring in Love, Loss and What I Wore, and recently starred in Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius  on Broadway for MTC, and Greg Kotis's Pig Farm for Roundabout. Broadway: Sally Bowles in Cabaret, The Iceman Cometh, Neil Simon's Proposals, You Never Can Tell, The Heiress, In the Summerhouse, My Favorite Year, Two Shakespearean Actors and On Borrowed Time. Off-Broadway: Arms and the Man, Encores!, Lil’ Abner, Bosoms and Neglect, A Fair Country and Edith Stein. London, West End: Fuddy Meers. Film: Broken Bridges, Walk the Talk, Firehouse Dog, Miss Congeniality 2, Bewitched, You've Got Mail, Liberty Heights and Night of the Living Dead. TV: Drive, My Ex Life, The Inside, Wonderfalls, Frasier, Oz and Sex and the City.

'Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical'
2010 Tony Award Nominees

Barbara Cook (Performer in Sondheim on Sondheim)
Barbara Cook's silvery soprano, purity of tone, and warm presence have delighted audiences around the world for more than 50 years. Considered “Broadway's favorite ingenue” during the heyday of the Broadway musical, Miss Cook then launched a second career as a concert and recording artist soaring from one professional peak to another. Ms. Cook's most recent New York appearances include an appearance with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, a reprise of her three sold out 80th Birthday concerts in 2007, and a critically acclaimed new show “Here's To Life” at Feinstein's at the Regency. In the past few years Ms. Cook also returned to Carnegie Hall, where she made her legendary solo concert debut over 30 years ago, for her sixth solo concert and made an historic solo concert debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, where she became the first female solo pop singer to be presented in concert by the MET. Miss Cook won a NY Drama Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk award for her concert Barbara Cook's Broadway and was nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her previous concert, Mostly Sondheim. Her many Broadway credits include the creation of three classic roles in the American musical theatre: Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (Tony Award) and Amalia in Bock and Harnick's She Loves Me (Drama Desk Award). In 1975 she made her Carnegie Hall debut which was preserved as the live recording, Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall. She then embarked on a second career as a concert and recording artist performing in most of the country's major concert halls and cabarets. In 1987 she won a Drama Desk Award for her Broadway show, A Concert for the Theatre. Her many London appearances include: her Gala 1997 Birthday Concert with the Royal Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall; appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican; engagements at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, and Sadler's Wells; and Olivier Award-nominated appearances at the Albery Theatre, at the Lyric Theatre with Mostly Sondheim, two engagements of Barbara Cook's Broadway, and most recently an appearance with the English National Ballet in an all-Gershwin evening at the Royal Albert Hall. A Grammy Award winner, her recordings include eight original Broadway cast albums, two Ben Bagley albums of songs by Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, an album entitled Songs of Perfect Propriety, featuring poems by Dorothy Parker set to music by Seymour Barab, As Of Today (Columbia) and The Disney Album (MCA). Her more recent recordings for DRG Records include: Close as Pages in a Book, Barbara Cook: Live From London, Oscar Winners: The Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein, All I Ask Of You, The Champion Season: A Salute to Gower Champion, Mostly Sondheim, Barbara Cook's Broadway, the Grammy nominated Count Your Blessings, Tribute, the live performance cd, Barbara Cook at the Met, No One Is Alone and Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder. Next month, DRG Records will release a boxed set of her recordings under the title The Essential Barbara Cook.

Angela Lansbury ("Madame Armfeldt" in A Little Night Music)
Angela Lansbury has enjoyed an unprecedented career spanning more than 60 years, first as a star of motion pictures, and as an award-winning stage actor in New York and London. Most recently, she appeared as Madame Arcati in the 2009 revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, for which she won her fifth Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and she performed in 2006 in Terrence McNally’s Deuce, for which she was also nominated for a Tony. She made her Broadway debut in 1957 as Bert Lahr’s wife in Hotel Paradiso. In 1960, she returned to Broadway as Joan Plowright’s mother in the season’s most acclaimed drama, A Taste of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney. A year later, she starred in her first musical, Anyone Can Whistle. Lansbury returned to Broadway in triumph in 1966 in Mame, for which she won her first Tony. She received others as the Madwoman of Chaillot in Dear World (1968), as Mama Rose in the 1974 revival of Gypsy and as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (1979). From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher, mystery-writing amateur sleuth, on Murder, She Wrote, the longest-running detective drama series in the history of television, and won four Golden Globe Awards. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth named her a Commander of the British Empire, and in 2000 she received the Kennedy Center Honors. Married in 1949, she and husband Peter worked together until his death in 2003. She has three children and three grandchildren.

Karine Plantadit ("Kate" in Come Fly Away)
Raised in Cameroon, received ballet training in West Africa & France, and was a soloist with the Ailey company for 7 years. Theatre: Movin’ Out (Brenda/Jessica); The Lion King (Cheetah, Lioness); Saturday Night Fever (Shirley Charles). Commercials: EBay, American Express, Visa, Subway, LensCrafters & McDonalds. TV/ Film: “Sex and the City,”“Starved,” Frida, Stay, Chicago and Across the Universe. Recent: one-woman show La Voix created by John Selya based on J.Cocteau’s “La Voix Humaine" and a cabaret act portraying La Baker in the Museum of NYC. Karine is beyond delighted to be with you tonight.

Lillias White ("Funmilayo" in Fela!)
Lillias White received Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for her performance as Sonia in The Life. Other Broadway credits: Barnum, Dreamgirls, Cats, Once on This Island, How to Succeed… and Chicago. Film/TV: Pieces of April, Game 6, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Sesame Street (Emmy), Law & Order: SVU, The Jury, NYPD Blue, PBS performance at the White House, Great Performance's South Pacific and Disney’s Hercules. Off-Broadway: Crowns (AUDELCO Award), William Finn’s Romance in Hard Times (Obie), The Best Is Yet to Come (2009 L.A. Ovation Award nom.) and as Dinah Washington in Dinah Was. Recordings: Dreamgirls in Concert and From Brooklyn to Broadway. Thanks to Mom, Aunt Lillias, Wenndy, Gary, Cornerstone and Freedom!