The 62nd Annual Tony Awards, 2008

A fairly unsurprising group of winners was announced on June 15, 2008 at Radio City Music Hall. And despite being the first ceremony to have one host in a few years (the wise-cracking Whoopi Goldberg), ratings are apparently only marginally better than last year's record-breaking low.

Personally, I was most pleased that Patti LuPone's incredible performance in Gypsy was awarded, along with her terrific co-stars Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines. Kelli O'Hara, who does fine work in South Pacific will have plenty more chances and despite her loss, South Pacific was unsurprisingly the biggest winner of the night with seven awards: Best Actor Paulo Szot, Best Director Bartlett Sher, and Best Revival of a Musical and the revival swept all four of the design categories.

Until recently, there had been only three design categories in total for both plays and musicals: Scenic, Costume, and Lighting design, the last of those only having been presented since 1970. In 2005, the three categories were bisected so the designs of plays could be separately recognized from the designs of musicals. The 1961 season had also included separate awards for Costume and Scenic design of plays and musicals. This season, the category of Sound Design was added for both plays and musicals, creating a total of eight design awards.

The other biggest winner of the evening (also surprising no one) was August: Osage County, Tracy Letts's Pulitzer-Prize winning play imported from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre with its Chicago cast almost completely in tact. In addition to Best Play, Best Director and Best Scenic Design of a Play, Deanna Dunagan and Rondi Reed, both of whom sadly played their final performances yesterday afternoon, accepted awards in the Best Leading and Featured Actress in a Play categories. (Starting tomorrow, Estelle Parsons and Steppenwolf actress Molly Regan will take over Duanagan and Reed's roles, respectively).

In a season notably strongest in plays and revivals, only two new musicals received Tony Awards. In the Heights, after winning the first two competive awards of the night (announced via webcast prior to the CBS show) for Best Orchestrations and Choreopgrahy, as expected, took Best Musical and Best Score. Passing Strange, which some pundits had predicted would pull an upset, failed to do so, scoring only one award, Best Book of a Musical.

Three of the four design categories for plays were won by Roundabout Theatre productions: Sound and Lighting Design went to The 39 Steps, while Les Liaisons Dangereuses won for costumes. (Scenic Design, as previously noted, went to August: Osage County). In the category of Best Revival of a Play, the 60s French sex farce Boeing Boeing beat out heavy competition from revivals of works by Pinter and Shakespeare and Christopher Hampton. The original production of Boeing Boeing opened in France in 1960 and played there for nineteen years. The original London production ran for seven years, but it flopped in its first Broadway outing in 1965, closing after only twenty-three performances. Matthew Warchus's staging currently playing the Longacre first became a hit on the London stage in 2007. Star Mark Rylance, the sole cast member to have appeared both in the London and Broadway productions, won the Best Leading Actor in a Play Tony award and gave the most puzzling speech of the night.

Some of last night's performances:

Xanadu, which sadly went home empty handed:


Another Tony loser, the critically acclaimed revival of Sunday In the Park With George:


Best Musical winner In the Heights


Best Book of a Musical winner, Passing Strange:


Winners Gaines, Benanti, and LuPone in Gypsy:


Winner of seven Tonys including Best Musical Revival, South Pacific: