In other production categories, the Tony for Best Revival of a Play went to the late August Wilson's drama Fences starring Denzel Washington (who won the Best Actor Tony) and Viola Davis (who was Tony-blessed as Best Actress in a Play), and Best Revival of a Musical went to La Cage aux Folles starring British actor Douglas Hodge (who won the Tony as Best Actor in a Musical) and Kelsey Grammer.

Sean Hayes, a 2010 Best Actor nominee currently starring in Broadway's Promises, Promises, hosted the 64th Annual Tony Awards, which celebrate the best of Broadway's 2009-10 season.

The revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's La Cage aux Folles originated (with Hodge as Albin/Zaza) at the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory in London and has been hailed by critics. Director Terry Johnson (who won the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical) reinvented the title's drag club not as a lavish Vegas-style venue but as a grittier, vest-pocket neighborhood joint. He also set the 1984 musical in the late '70s, before AIDS-era modern gay expression surfaced, making the Jerry Herman anthem "The Best of Times" more poignant than ever. Except for Hodge and one featured dancer (Nicholas Cunningham) from the U.K., the Broadway cast of La Cage is made up of American performers.

	Denzel Washington and Viola Davis
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

American playwright John Logan got the idea for his play Red when he viewed Rothko paintings in London while he was working there on the film of "Sweeney Todd." Young British actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays Ken — a fictional assistant to artist Mark Rothko in Red — won the Tony as Best Featured Actor in a Play. His character brings out the best and worst in Rothko, illuminating the life of the passionate, troubled artist. Redmayne previously won the Olivier Award for his work after the play's debut at London's Donmar Warehouse. Michael Grandage, Donmar's artistic director, won in the category of Best Direction of a Play for Red (he was a previous Tony direction nominee for Frost/Nixon). Grandage's entire design team (lights, set and sound) won 2010 Tonys. The play is set in Rothko's grubby-gray industrial art studio, where the color of the world is not only Rothko's scarlet canvases but the two vivid men who dwell there.

Lyricist-librettist Joe DiPietro, who has been writing for the theatre for more than 15 years, won Tony for Best Book of a Musical and Best Score (sharing the latter with composer-lyricist David Bryan, the rocker of the band Bon Jovi). DiPietro may be best known for his international hit musical I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.

Memphis, the tale of a white DJ who promotes and falls for a black singer in the Jim Crow South, has been in development for seven years, and was seen in readings, workshops and an out-of-town tryout co-produced by La Jolla Playhouse and 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle before coming to Broadway. The producers and creative team remained loyal to its stars Montego Glover and Chad Kimball from the beginning. The Tony win is a sweet victory for lead producers and the show's longtime shepherds Sue Frost and Randy Adams of Junkyard Dog Productions.

The one award for the musical Million Dollar Quartet — about the fateful 1950s recording-studio meeting of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley — went to Best Featured Actor in a Musical Levi Kreis for his fiery turn as Lewis. He and his castmates originated their roles in Chicago for a long run before the work transferred to Broadway.

	Eddie Redmayne and Katie Finneran
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

The one award for the new revival of A Little Night Music went to Catherine Zeta-Jones as Best Actress in a Musical. The show goes on hiatus June 20 before Bernadette Peters steps into Zeta-Jones' shoes in July (with Elaine Stritch taking the role created by Angela Lansbury). Bill T. Jones won the Tony for Best Choreography for the expressionistic musical Fela!, about the late Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti.

Katie Finneran is on stage in the new revival of Promises, Promises for only about 15 minutes, but critics and audiences went wild for her performance as a tipsy one-song character named Marge MacDougall. Tony voters loved her, too: She won the Tony as Featured Actress in a Musical. It's her second featured-actress Tony after winning in 2002 for a revival of Noises Off

Film star Scarlett Johansson, for her Broadway debut as a niece struggling to grow beyond the grasp of her uncle, in A View From the Bridge, won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She thanked her mom for helping her pound the pavement when she was a child actress. Like her co-stars in the Arthur Miller play, glamorous Johannson disappeared behind a Brooklyn accent and embraced the clouds of working-class hardship that shrouded the acclaimed revival.

Lifetime Achievement Award recipient playwright Ayckbourn thanked two major New York supporters of his work in recent years — Lynne Meadow, artistic director of Manhattan Theatre Club, and Off-Broadway's 59E59 Theaters and its leaders Peter Tear and Elysabeth Kleinhans. This is the first Tony won by the author of such plays as Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce and The Norman Conquests. He noted that this was a special Tony, and that he hoped to win in a competitive category one day. "If not, and it's my last, what a helluva good way to finish," he said.

When she accepted her Special Tony for Lifetime Achievement, Marian Seldes walked to the microphone, put her hand to her cheek and wordlessly made a stunned expression before exiting (slowly, grandly) into the wings.

The final tally of winners follows:
Red - 6
Memphis - 4
Fences - 3
Fela - 3
La Cage aux Folles - 3
American Idiot - 2
A View from the Bridge - 1
Promises, Promises - 1
Million Dollar Quartet - 1
The Royal Family - 1
A Little Night Music -

Nominees and recipients of the 64th Annual Tony Awards follow, with recipients marked in bold and with an asterisk.

Best Musical

American Idiot

Fela!

*Memphis

Million Dollar Quartet

	Catherine Zeta-Jones and Douglas Hodge
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical Kelsey Grammer, La Cage aux Folles
Sean Hayes, Promises, Promises
*Douglas Hodge, La Cage aux Folles
Chad Kimball, Memphis
Sahr Ngaujah, Fela!

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

Kate Baldwin, Finian's Rainbow
Montego Glover, Memphis
Christiane Noll, Ragtime Sherie Rene Scott, Everyday Rapture
*Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Little Night Music

Best Revival of a Musical

Finian's Rainbow

*La Cage aux Folles

A Little Night Music

Ragtime

Best Play

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play
Author: Sarah Ruhl

Next Fall
Author: Geoffrey Nauffts

*Red
Author: John Logan

Time Stands Still
Author: Donald Margulies

Best Revival of a Play

*Fences

Lend Me a Tenor

7 The Royal Family

A View From the Bridge

Best Choreography

Rob Ashford, Promises, Promises
*Bill T. Jones, Fela!
Lynne Page, La Cage aux Folles
Twyla Tharp, Come Fly Away

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play Jude Law, Hamlet
Alfred Molina, Red
Liev Schreiber, A View from the Bridge
Christopher Walken, A Behanding in Spokane
*Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

*Viola Davis, Fences
Valerie Harper, Looped
Linda Lavin, Collected Stories
Laura Linney, Time Stands Still
Jan Maxwell, The Royal Family

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

Kevin Chamberlin, The Addams Family
Robin De Jesús, La Cage aux Folles
Christopher Fitzgerald, Finian's Rainbow
*Levi Kreis, Million Dollar Quartet
Bobby Steggert, Ragtime

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Barbara Cook, Sondheim on Sondheim
*Katie Finneran, Promises, Promises
Angela Lansbury, A Little Night Music
Karine Plantadit, Come Fly Away
Lillias White, Fela!

Best Direction of a Musical

Christopher Ashley, Memphis
Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Ragtime
*Terry Johnson, La Cage aux Folles
Bill T. Jones, Fela!

Best Direction of a Play

*Michael Grandage, Red
Sheryl Kaller, Next Fall
Kenny Leon, Fences
Gregory Mosher, A View from the Bridge

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

David Alan Grier, Race
Stephen McKinley Henderson, Fences
Jon Michael Hill, Superior Donuts
Stephen Kunken, Enron
*Eddie Redmayne, Red

	Scarlett Johansson and Levi Kreis
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Maria Dizzia, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play
Rosemary Harris, The Royal Family
Jessica Hecht, A View from the Bridge
*Scarlett Johansson, A View from the Bridge
Jan Maxwell, Lend Me a Tenor

Best Sound Design of a Musical

Jonathan Deans, La Cage aux Folles
*Robert Kaplowitz, Fela!
Dan Moses Schreier and Gareth Owen, A Little Night Music
Dan Moses Schreier, Sondheim on Sondheim

Best Sound Design of a Play

Acme Sound Partners, Fences
Adam Cork, Enron
*Adam Cork, Red
Scott Lehrer, A View from the Bridge

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Marina Draghici, Fela!
*Christine Jones, American Idiot
Derek McLane, Ragtime
Tim Shortall, La Cage aux Folles

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

*Kevin Adams, American Idiot
Donald Holder, Ragtime
Nick Richings, La Cage aux Folles
Robert Wierzel, Fela!

Best Lighting Design of a Play

Neil Austin, Hamlet
*Neil Austin, Red
Mark Henderson, Enron
Brian MacDevitt, Fences

Best Scenic Design of a Play John Lee Beatty, The Royal Family
Alexander Dodge, Present Laughter
Santo Loquasto, Fences
*Christopher Oram, Red

Best Costume Design of a Musical
*Marina Draghici, Fela!
Paul Tazewell, Memphis
Matthew Wright, La Cage aux Folles

Best Costume Design of a Play

Martin Pakledinaz, Lend Me a Tenor
Constanza Romero, Fences
David Zinn, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play
*Catherine Zuber, The Royal Family

Best Book of a Musical

Everyday Rapture
Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott

Fela!
Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones

*Memphis
Joe DiPietro

Million Dollar Quartet
Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

The Addams Family
Music & Lyrics: Andrew Lippa Enron
Music: Adam Cork
Lyrics: Lucy Prebble

Fences
Music: Branford Marsalis

*Memphis
Music: David Bryan
Lyrics: Joe DiPietro, David Bryan

Best Orchestrations

Jason Carr, La Cage aux Folles
Aaron Johnson, Fela!
Jonathan Tunick, Promises, Promises
*Daryl Waters & David Bryan, Memphis

The 2010 Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre were presented to playwright and director Alan Ayckbourn, and Tony Award-winning actress Marian Seldes.

The recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award is Tony Award winner David Hyde Pierce. The Isabelle Stevenson Award recognizes an individual from the theatre community "who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations, regardless of whether such organizations relate to the theatre.

This year's Tony Honors are presented to The Alliance of Resident Theatres New York, B.H. Barry and BC/EFA executive director Tom Viola.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, is the recipient of the 2010 Tony Award for Regional Theatre.

*** Playbill.com blogged from the Tony ceremony press room throughout the evening. Playbill magazine editor Blake Ross tweeted from her seat in Radio City Music Hall to give theatre fans a view of the ceremony from the audience's perspective, including what's not captured on camera in the auditorium. Join Twitter and follow her at twitter.com/PlaybillBlake. Playbill staffers tweeted on Twitter throughout the evening, too. Join Twitter and follow twitter.com/Playbill. We'll also share Tony news on Facebook. Join Facebook and follow Playbill.

 

 

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The new musical Fela!, which began life Off-Broadway, and the revival of La Cage aux Folles, earned 11 nominations a piece, the most of any production of the season.

* The 2010 Tonys are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing. At The Broadway League, Paul Libin is chairman, and Charlotte St. Martin is executive director. At the American Theatre Wing, Theodore S. Chapin is chairman, and Howard Sherman is executive director. For Tony Award Productions, Alan Wasser and Allan Williams of Alan Wasser Associates are the general managers.