NEW YORK The feel good musical Kinky Boots with songs by pop star and Broadway newcomer Cyndi Lauper won six 2013 Tony Awards on Sunday including best musical best score and best leading man.
Christopher Durang's comical Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the best play Tony. Matilda the Musical won four awards and three other shows Pippin Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Nance shared three awards each.
Lauper who wrote the hit Girls Just Want to Have Fun 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.)
Kinky Boots also won for choreography and two technical awards and Billy Porter won for leading man in a musical.
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 crackling high energy revival of the musical Pippin which also earned the best 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 66 who won as featured actress in a musical plays Pippin's grandmother and sings the music hall favorite No Time at All stuns audiences nightly by doing jaw dropping stunts that would make someone a fraction of her age blanch.
The Tonys were broadcast live by CBS from Radio City Music Hall. Neil Patrick Harris was back for his fourth turn as emcee and leads a show featuring talented children and pulse pounding musical numbers.
The big opening number started with Harris simply holding a guitar in a pub like 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 featured actress in a play Tony in two years cementing the former TV star of One Life to Live and Who's the Boss as a Broadway star.
She followed 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.
Gabriel Ebert of Matilda the Musical won as best featured actor in a musical. He thanked his four Matildas and his parents stooping down to speak into the microphone.
Cicely Tyson 88 won the best leading actress in a play honors for the revival of The Trip to Bountiful the show's only award on 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.
Lauper and Harvey Fierstein have given Kinky Boots originally a 2005 film about a failing shoe factory that turns to making drag queen boots a fun score and a touching book that celebrates diversity.
I want to thank Harvey Fierstein for calling me up. I'm so glad I was done with the dishes and answered the phone Lauper said.
The import Matilda the Musical is a witty dark musical adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl that is still running in London. Its leading woman is actually a man Bertie Carver who plays the evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull.
Others musicals hoping for awards include the acrobatic Bring It On The Musical the hit heavy Motown the Musical and A Christmas Story the Musical adapted from the beloved holiday movie. Top musical revivals include an updated Rodgers Hammerstein's Cinderella and a cracking revival of Pippin with a circus feel.
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 especially the young tap dancer wizard Luke Spring 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 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 with a twisted version of What I Did For Love from A Chorus Line.
Kenneth Posner surprisingly did not take home the award for best lighting design of a musical. Of the four shows in the category Posner had been nominated for three Kinky Boots Pippin and Rodgers Hammerstein's Cinderella. But he lost to his only competitor Hugh Vanstone who designed the lighting for Matilda the Musical.
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.
The awards telecast faced competition for attention on Sunday night from an episode of Mad Men on AMC and Game 2 of the NBA finals between San Antonio and Miami on ABC. Last year's telecast was seen by 6 million viewers down significantly from 2011's 6.9 million.
The awards cap a somewhat grim financial season on Broadway in which the total box office take was flat and the number of ticket buyers slipped 6 percent. Both numbers were blamed in part on Superstorm Sandy but high ticket prices and the lack of long term audience growth has many worried.
A total of 46 new shows opened during the season which began last May and ended May 26 15 musicals 26 plays and five special events or concerts.
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