'Heights' and 'Osage County' are Tonys' best musical, play

A neighborhood and a family - both in sweeping transition - are the subjects of this Broadway season's best-musical and best-play Tony Award winners, honored last night at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

The exuberant In the Heights, which uses several musical genres to trace the gentrification of a Latino neighborhood in Manhattan, won for best musical. Lin-Manuel Miranda, 28, who conceived the show while in college, also won, for best musical score, as did choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. The show won for its orchestrations as well.

Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, considered a shoo-in for best play, won that award and four others. The searing, funny play, brought to Broadway from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is about a family for whom dysfunctional is a feeble adjective. When the patriarch vanishes, family members gather and get their hooks into one another in a sort of intellectual blood sport.

Lincoln Center's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific - the first Broadway revival of the American classic based on James Michener's stories - won as best musical revival, in a season with three dynamic musical revivals.

Paulo Szot, a Brazilian opera singer in his Broadway debut, won as best musical actor for a powerful portrayal of the Frenchman who falls in love with an American nurse. South Pacific also won for lighting, sound, costumes, scenery and direction by Bartlett Sher - seven awards, the most of any production.

Patti LuPone, a life force giving a career-high-mark performance in Gypsy as Momma Rose, history's pushiest stage mother, won for best musical actress. "It's such a wonderful gift to be an actress working on the Broadway stage - and pick up one of these every 30 years or so," LuPone said, accepting the award. She won for Evita 28 years ago.

Deanna Dunagan, who plays the outrageous, pill-popping mother in August: Osage County, won as best actress in a play. In 34 years in regional theater, the Chicago actress said, she watched the Tonys but never thought about the possibility of winning one. "New York has embraced us so enthusiastically."

August: Osage County also won for its direction by Anna D. Shapiro, a Northwestern University professor long associated with Steppenwolf Theatre; Shapiro directed The Infidel for Philadelphia Theatre Company in 2002. Rondi Reed, who plays an aunt who has lost her social filter, won for best featured, or supporting, actress in a play.

The three-hour ceremony, broadcast by CBS, was hosted by a clowning, costume-changing Whoopi Goldberg. It featured numbers from 13 current musicals, a special award to composer Stephen Sondheim (whose gracious acceptance speech was read by actor Mandy Patinkin), and the annual regional theater award, which went to Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

The nominating committee chose competitors in Tony's categories last month, from among the 36 productions that opened this season in Broadway's 39 theaters - a season marred by a 19-day stagehands strike that darkened most of the houses in the fall.

A Tony Award also was given posthumously before the broadcast to Robert Russell Bennett, an orchestrator who worked on South Pacific and others. Bennett died in 1981.

The hilarious 1960 French play Boeing-Boeing - about a man who juggles three stewardess girlfriends from different airlines - won as best revival of a play, and its star, Mark Rylance, won as the best leading actor in a play.

The one-name composer/performer Stew won for best book of a musical, for his Passing Strange, the rock-genre musical about a middle-class black teenager who goes to Europe to find himself among the avant-garde. Philadelphia playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes had been nominated for the category for her In the Heights script.

"We're all very excited," Hudes said in a phone call after In the Heights was awarded best musical - the final award - and she went on stage with the creative team and producers to accept it. "I felt like I was up there with family and friends."

Jim Norton won the award for featured actor in a play for his portrayal of the elderly host of a drunken night of card-playing in The Seafarer, which Philadelphia's Arden Theatre will produce next year.

Best featured actor in a musical went to Boyd Gaines, a Broadway favorite, who plays the put-upon agent in the revival of Gypsy. Laura Benanti, who plays Louise - the girl who becomes the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee - won for best featured actress.

Last night's awards were decided by 795 voters, who are producers, theater professionals and critics. The Tony Awards are presented by producers, who make up the Broadway League, and by the American Theatre Wing.

Best play. August: Osage County.

Best musical. In the Heights.

Best book of a musical. Stew, Passing Strange.

Best original score (music and/or lyrics). Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights.

Best revival of a play. Boeing-Boeing.

Best revival of a musical. South Pacific.

Best leading actor in a play. Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing.

Best leading actress in a play. Deanna Dunagan,

August: Osage County.

Best leading actor in a musical. Paulo Szot, South Pacific.

Best leading actress in a musical. Patti LuPone, Gypsy.

Best featured actor in a play. Jim Norton, The Seafarer.

Best featured actress in a play. Rondi Reed,

August: Osage County.

Best featured actor in a musical. Boyd Gaines, Gypsy.

Best featured actress in a musical. Laura Benanti, Gypsy.

Best choreography. Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights.

Best orchestrations. Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman,

In the Heights.

Best scenic design of a play. Todd Rosenthal,

August: Osage County.

Best scenic design of a musical. Michael Yeargen,

South Pacific.

Best costume design of a play. Katrina Lindsay,

Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Best costume design of a musical. Catherine Zuber,

South Pacific.

Best lighting design of a play. Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps.

Best lighting design of a musical. Donald Holder,

South Pacific.

Best sound design of a play. Mic Pool, The 39 Steps.

Best sound design of a musical. Scott Lehrer,

South Pacific.

Best direction of a play. Anna D. Shapiro,

August: Osage County.

Best direction of a musical. Bartlett Sher, South Pacific

Regional theater Tony Award. Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Special Tony Award: The late orchestrator

Robert Russell Bennett.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Stephen Sondheim.EndText