The Tony Awards balance sympathy with perseverance

7:02 P.M.

The Tony Awards balance sympathy with perseverance

Charles McNulty

There is no right way to handle an event like an awards show in the wake of a terrible tragedy, but the Tonys should be commended for balancing discretion with heartfeltness, sympathy with perseverance as it went about the business of celebrating the best of the 2015-16 Broadway season on the same day of the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

James Corden prefaced the telecast with the following statement: “You are not on your own right now. Your tragedy is our tragedy. Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality and gender is equal, is embraced, and is loved. Hate will never win.”

References to the heinous shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., were contained, but the message that “love is love is love” and it “cannot be killed or swept away,” as Lin-Manuel Miranda put it in the sonnet he wrote for his wife, came across loud and clear. Grief was palpable, but the dominant note was joy in the life-affirming, democratic zone that is the stage.