At Home in New York, Anna Wintour and Bee Carrozzini Toasted a Groundbreaking Season for the New York Theater

The directors in attendance being some of the best (and the busiest) in the business, it was a trick to keep track of just who had helmed what—not least because several were pulling double or triple duty, like David Cromer (of both Dead Outlaw and Good Night, and Good Luck), Taymor (her next show, the buzzy Trophy Boys, begins previews later this week; “We did two rounds of it yesterday, and it’s really, really cool,” she enthused), and Saheem Ali (of Buena Vista Social Club, Goddess at the Public Theater, and then, in August, Twelfth Night in Central Park’s newly renovated Delacorte Theatre). Others had a bit more time between productions: Sam Gold, who mounted a thoroughly modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at the Circle in the Square Theatre last fall, is now in previews with Penelope Skinner’s Angry Alan, starring John Krasinski, at Studio Seaview, Manhattan’s newest off-Broadway theater; and this fall, Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending) will finally bring The Queen of Versailles—the much-touted latest collaboration between Kristin Chenoweth and Stephen Schwartz—to Broadway’s St. James Theatre.

Of course, they weren’t the only people savoring a break in their breakneck schedules: Many of the actors present are still doing eight shows a week, on top of balancing various press commitments ahead of Tonys weekend. (Just take LaTanya Richardson Jackson, a star of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama Purpose, who went from the Fourth Annual Black Women on Broadway Awards on Monday afternoon to the unveiling of Denzel Washington’s portrait at Sardi’s—and still made it downtown in time for cocktails.) Left to their own devices, I wondered, how did others like to spend their leisure time?

The Last Five Years’ Nick Jonas, for one, had just enjoyed an idyllic-sounding day off: “I walked along the High Line with my family,” he shared. “We just went from 30th Street down to Meatpacking and had a nice brunch.” Taking things in a different direction, the ever-charismatic Jonathan Groff, of Just in Time, hied to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in leather chaps a week ago for the Cowboy Carter tour (“I just did The Tonight Show and showed the pictures of me in the outfit,” he told me gleefully). Tom Francis, the handsome leading man in Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Blvd., is something of a soda savant on TikTok these days; Darren Criss, of Maybe Happy Ending, has developed a “fixation” on vintage Bob Mackie shirts (the embroidered button-up that he picked out for Monday’s party was one example) and texting with his fellow nominees; and while Jennifer Simard, a riot in Death Becomes Her, likes to snuggle up with a British crime series—“a tea and a murder,” as she put it—Natalie Venetia Belcon recovers from the joyful noise of Buena Vista Social Club in perfect silence: “It’s actually an excellent sound when you’re busy.”

It’s not just stagework keeping these performers’ hands full, either. Andrew Scott (another Drama Desk winner on Sunday) ended his head-spinning, one-man run in Vanya last month, but has all manner of film projects forthcoming—from Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, about the opening night of Oklahoma!, in October (Scott plays Richard Rodgers opposite Ethan Hawke’s Lorenz Hart), to Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, out this December. And besides appearing in Purpose, Glenn Davis is also a co-artistic director of Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which means that most Mondays, “I’m in meetings,” he admitted. “Or I fly back to Chicago for a day in the office. But I’m thrilled about the company and what we’re doing, so I’ve got no complaints.”

That was really the prevailing sentiment of the night: Intensely demanding as their work may be, every person seemed intensely grateful to be doing it—and to get to see their friends and peers do it, too. Purpose’s Kara Young, who has racked up an astonishing four Tony nominations in as many years, was nothing if not a cheerleader for her castmates on Monday. Dressed in an incredible floral jacket by Ceilidh Michelle (fellow Purpose star Jon Michael Hill’s girlfriend) and Simone Rocha dress, she whipped out her phone to “take B-roll” of Jackson.

But what might have been even more moving was the sight of Sutton Foster—an effervescent Princess Winnifred in last fall’s Once Upon a Mattress—giving Young her metaphorical flowers, too: “I’ve been sitting and just enjoying you from afar, and you’re just incredible,” Foster gushed. Something similar happened later, when Nicole Scherzinger, a bloody excellent Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., praised Sarah Snook—dressed in prettily patterned One/Of by Patricia Voto—for her breathtaking, Drama Desk-winning turn in Kip Williams’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: “I was screaming for you on Sunday.”

Maybe Death Becomes Her’s Megan Hilty wrapped it all up best: “I can’t believe I get to be a part of this.”