Neil Patrick Harris hosts the 66th Annual Tony Awards.

by Adel Manoukian

The 66th Annual Tony Awards hosted by television star Neil Patrick Harris brought together many talented Broadway stars and alums this past Sunday at the Beacon Theatre. The night went to the musical, “Once” garnering the most wins with 8 Tonys out of 11 nominations. In case you missed the star-studded night, here is a list of other winners in each category.

Musical: “Once.”

Play: “Clybourne Park.”

Revival of a Play: “Death of a Salesman.”

Revival of a Musical: “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.”

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: James Corden, “One Man, Two Guvnors.”

Performance by an Actress in Leading Role in a Play: Nina Arianda, “Venus in Fur.”

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Steve Kazee, “Once.”

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: Audra McDonald, “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.”

Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play: Christian Borle, “Peter and the Starcatcher.”

Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Judith Light, “Other Desert Cities.”

Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical: Michael McGrath, “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical: Judy Kaye, “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

Book of a Musical: Enda Walsh, “Once.”

Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre: “Newsies.”

Direction of Play: Mike Nichols, “Death of a Salesman.”

Direction of a Musical: John Tiffany, “Once.”

Choreography: Christopher Gattelli, “Newsies.”

Orchestration: Martin Lowe, “Once.”

Sound Design of a Play: Darron L. West, “Peter and the Starcatcher.”

Sound Design of a Musical: Clive Goodwin, “Once.”

Costume Design of a Play: Paloma Young, “Peter and the Starcatcher.”

Costume Design of a Musical: Gregg Barnes, “Follies.”

Scenic Design Play: Donyale Werle, “Peter and the Starcatcher”

Scenic Design of a Musical: Bob Crowley, “Once.”

Lighting Design of a Play: Jeff Croiter, “Peter and the Starcatcher.”

Lighting Design of a Musical: Natasha Katz, “Once.”

Plays by People Other than Playwrights
Few things were as painful to sit through as We Live Here and The Wood, both Off-Broadway. The former was a well-upholstered melodrama by actress Zoe Kazan that required more than a little suspension of disbelief (as well as a conscious forgetting of the tropes of Gothic literature to remain surprised by a mad sister playing the piano during a lashing rainstorm); the latter was another play from documentary filmmaker Dan Klores, a clunky affair about real-life journalist Mike McAlary that conveyed neither the excitement of a newsroom nor McAlary’s particular investigate reporting gifts.

Musicals at The York
The best thing about this year’s Road to Qatar and Tomorrow Morning was that they were both short. The worst thing was…just about everything else. Qatar aimed for dumb fun but only succeeded at being dumb, while Tomorrow Morning tried in vain for an elegiac tone that Once is currently nailing effortlessly. Neither show had anything fresh to say, and what was said wasn’t worth hearing. Not a great sign for the future of original musicals not based on movies.

Adam Rapp
The infuriating thing about Adam Rapp is that audiences know he can be capable of thrilling theater (Red Light Winter, The Metal Children). This year didn’t feature works that approached either of those, though it wasn’t for lack of trying: including The Hallway Trilogy, Manhattan saw five Adam Rapp plays in 2011, most of which featured the array of sordid frat boys and gleeful exhibitions of psychical and psychic suffering that has made his name. The final offering, Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling, was at least set in an upscale home, albeit one with a lion in the basement and a rain of geese. Is it any wonder Charles Isherwood wrote a heartfelt plea, begging to recuse himself from reviewing Rapp? Go away, Adam Rapp, so we can miss you for a while.

Period Musicals
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Baby It’s You! The People in the Picture. Play It Cool. The Blue Flower. Bonnie & Clyde. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. At some point during these musicals, the design teams and/or the writers and directors bashed audiences over the head with the time period, whether with silhouetted breadlines (Bonnie & Clyde), poorly written, hard-boiled dialogue (Play It Cool) or eye-gouging colors (On a Clear Day). In the case of the latter, who realized that the ’70s were quite so ugly?

The Public’s Shakespeare
A quick Beyoncé dance number in Love’s Labor’s Lost. A Lear so doddering so early on that we sympathize with Goneril and Regan. Dildo-sporting demons cavorting throughout Measure for Measure. An All’s Well That Ends Well that takes its title so literally there’s no room for doubt. All presented with a resolutely contemporary take on the dialogue that often twists it into pretzels to sound impromptu. Is The Public winning any fans with its strenuous, trying-too-hard-to-be-hip approaches to Shakespeare? As a not-for-profit company, it’s hard to forgive them for using their resources on a total of five Shakespearean plays this year, when so many other companies continue to present the same canon.

As for that whole half-full thing…you can put me on the record as saying I have rarely been more moved, tantalized or entertained than I was by Playwrights Horizons’ Kin, Go Back to Where You Are and Completeness, the Second Stage production of Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Keen Company’s Lemon Sky revival and the smart-about-being-dumb Lysistrata Jones. Memories of those shows (and a few others) will no doubt help get me through 2012.

Betty Gilpin, Jessica Collins and Jeremy Shamos in We Live Here.
PHOTO BY joan marcus