Phillip Boykin (sometimes credited as Phillip Lamar Boykin) (born November 2, 1968) is an American Tony Award nominated actor and bass-baritone singer. He's most well known for portraying Hades in the Broadway production of Hadestown from September 2023 to January 2025. [1]
One of ten children, Boykin grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. [2] He started studies in Opera Performance at South Carolina State College before transferring to the North Carolina School of the Arts. He left NCSA in 1990 [3] and moved to the Hartt School of the University of Hartford where he received his Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance in 1995. [4] He later studied toward a Master's degree in Opera and Jazz Vocals from Howard University. [5]
He received the 2015 Hartt Alumni Award from The Hartt School. [6]
Boykin portrayed Joe in the 1999 to 2001 non-equity tour of Show Boat . He reprised the role in the 2008 North Shore Music Theatre production (which won him an IRNE Award), the 2009 Media Theatre production, and the 2013 Wells Fargo Pavilion production. He also played Caiaphas in the North Shore Music Theatre production of Jesus Christ Superstar in 2006. [7]
He was nominated for the Tony Award, as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Crown in the Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess (2012). He was awarded the Theater World Award for his Outstanding Broadway debut. He reprised the role in 2014 at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. [8]
Boykin portrayed Booker T. Washington in Ragtime at Avery Fisher Hall in 2013. He was also featured in On the Town which ran on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre in 2014-2015. [9] In 2015, he starred as the Pirate King in New York City Center’s The Pirates of Penzance . In 2017 he was featured in the Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park with George . He made Broadway history as the first African-American Boatman/Lee Randolph in the production, which reopened Broadway's newest and oldest theater at the time, the Hudson Theatre, which played its last Broadway show in 1968. [10] Boykin played the role of Tonton Julian in the Revival of Once on This Island , which opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre on December 3, 2017 and closed on January 6, 2019. [11] In 2022, he was featured in the Hugh Jackman led Broadway revival of The Music Man as Olin Britt and a Traveling Salesman.
He is the founder and director of "The NYGospel Brothers", a gospel quartet that travels around the world spreading the good news.
He was seen in the films Freedom (2014) starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Top Five (2014) starring Chris Rock, and Easter Mysteries an oratorio-musical written by John O’Boyle. [12]
In 2019, he was inducted into the South Carolina Theatre Association Hall of Fame following a performance of the Once on this Island tour in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. [13]
In September 2023, he started starring in the Broadway production of Hadestown as Hades. [1] He's set to have his final performance on January 12, 2025 opposite Jordan Fisher as Orpheus. [14]
Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2012 | Tony Award | Best Featured Actor in a Musical | Porgy and Bess | Nominated | |
Drama Desk Award | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Nominated | |||
Theatre World Award | Won | ||||
2019 | Grammy Award | Best Musical Theater Album | Once on This Island | Nominated |
Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy.
Brock Peters was an American actor and singer, best known for playing the villainous "Crown" in the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess, and Tom Robinson in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. He made his Broadway debut in the 1965 Norman Rosten play Mister Johnson. He was nominated for a Tony Award and won a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for his lead role as Rev. Stephen Kumalo in the 1972 Broadway revival of the musical Lost in the Stars. He received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1991 and a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992.
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Dorothy Heyward was an American playwright.
The Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actors for quality leading roles in a musical play, whether a new production or a revival. The awards are named after Antoinette Perry, an American actress who died in 1946.
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Hope Clarke is an American actress, dancer, vocalist, choreographer, and director. Clarke, a Tony Award nominee, made history in 1995 when she became the first African-American, as well as the first African-American woman, to direct and choreograph a major staging of the classic opera, Porgy and Bess. Clarke began her career as a principal dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and as an actress appeared in many stage, film, and television productions. As a choreographer, Clarke is credited with staging and movement for more than 30 shows on and off Broadway.
Tom Hewitt is an American actor and Broadway stage performer, and a native of Victor, Montana.
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Robert Mosley was an American operatic bass-baritone. Part of the first generation of African-American opera singers to achieve wide success, he performed in numerous opera productions, recitals, and in concerts from the 1950s through the 1990s. In 1957 he won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He drew particular acclaim for his portrayal of Porgy in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, a role which he portrayed in the landmark 1976 Houston Grand Opera production, on Broadway, and at the Metropolitan Opera among other opera companies both in the United States and in Europe.
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