"Kinky Boots" has danced off with the top prize at Sunday's Tony Awards.
The feel-good musical, with songs by pop star and Broadway newcomer Cyndi Lauper, won six awards in all on Sunday, including the coveted award for best musical.
Christopher
Durang's comical "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" won the Tony for
best play. "Matilda the Musical" and "Pippin" won four awards each, and
two other shows -- "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The Nance" --
shared three awards each.
Lauper won her first Tony on Sunday for writing the 15-song score to
"Kinky Boots." The pop star thanked her old friend Harvey Fierstein, the
book writer for "La Cage aux Folles" and "Newsies," to lure her to
Broadway.
She added, "I want to thank Broadway for welcoming me. I understand how hard you work...your hard work inspires me."
The
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" singer was part of an impressive group of
women who took top honors. Diane Paulus and Pam MacKinnon both won for
directing -- a rare time women have won directing Tonys for both a
musical and a play in the same year. (It also happened most recently at
the 1998 Tonys.)
In addition to winning best musical and score, "Kinky Boots" also won
for choreography, two technical awards and leading man in a musical,
which went to Billy Porter.
Porter beat "Kinky Boots"
co-star Stark Sands and told him from the stage: "You are my rock, my
sword, my shield. Your grace gives me presence. I share this award with
you. I'm gonna keep it at my house! But I share it with you."
Durang,
whose other works include the play "Beyond Therapy," was a Tony nominee
for "A History of the American Film" and his "Miss Witherspoon" was a
Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2006.
Paulus won her first Tony
for directing the high-energy revival of the musical "Pippin," which
also earned the best musical revival honor and helped Patina Miller earn
a best leading actress trophy.
MacKinnon won for directing the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?," a year after earning her first nomination for helming
"Clybourne Park." Her revival of Edward Albee's story of marital strife
won the best play revival and earned Tracy Letts his first acting Tony,
an upset beating of Tom Hanks.
"The greatest job on Earth. We are the ones who say it to their faces, and we have a unique responsibility," Letts said.
Andrea
Martin won as featured actress in a musical for "Pippin," while Gabriel
Ebert of "Matilda the Musical" won as best featured actor in a musical.
The Tonys were broadcast live by CBS from Radio City Music Hall. Neil Patrick Harris was back for his fourth turn as emcee, leading a show featuring talented children and pulse-pounding musical numbers.
The night's opening number started with Harris simply holding a
guitar in a pub like in "Once," but quickly morphed into a flashy
razzle-dazzle number that showcased performers from almost a dozen
musicals -- and even ex-boxer Mike Tyson dancing. Harris sang "It's
bigger! Tonight it's bigger," jumped through a hoop, vanished from a box
and promised a "truly legendary show" before glitter guns went off.
Courtney
B. Vance won for best featured actor in a play for portraying a
newspaper editor opposite Tom Hanks in "Lucky Guy." He dedicated his
award to his mother.
Judith Light won her second Tony in
two years, following up her win last year as a wise-cracking alcoholic
aunt in "Other Desert Cities" with the role of a wry mother in "The
Assembled Parties," in which she goes from about 53 to 73 over the
play's two acts.
"I want to thank every woman that I am
in this category nominated with: you have made this a celebration, not a
competition," she said.
Cicely Tyson won the best leading actress in a play
honor for the revival of "The Trip to Bountiful," the show's only award
of the night. It was the actress' first time back on Broadway in three
decades.
"'Please wrap it up,' it says. Well, that's
exactly what you did with me: You wrapped me up in your arms after 30
years," she said.
Some of the telecast highlights included the stunning kids on
Broadway -- the orphans in "Annie," the actor Raymond Luke Jr. as a
pre-teen Michael Jackson in "Motown the Musical," and the dancing tots
in "A Christmas Story, the Musical," plus the four young women in
"Matilda."
Harris got his face licked by the dog playing Sandy in "Annie," made
fun of Tyson and Shia LaBeouf, who left a revival of the play "Orphans"
before the show opened and then tweeted about it, and joined with
"Smash" star Megan Hilty, "Go On" star Laura Benanti and former "The
Book of Mormon" star Andrew Rannells to skewer theater stars who seek
fame on TV shows with a twisted version of "What I Did For Love" from "A
Chorus Line."
Presenters included Jesse Eisenberg, Jon
Cryer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, Zachary Quinto, Sally Field,
Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
The
Tony winners were picked by 868 Tony voters, including members of The
Broadway League, American Theatre Wing, Actors' Equity, the Dramatists
Guild, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society as well as critics
from the New York Drama Critics Circle.
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