Posted on Mon, Jun. 16, 2008

Tony winner-turned-View star Whoopi Goldberg hosted the Tony ceremony and CBS telecast from Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall. After the show's stirring start -- the thrilling Circle of Life animal procession from The Lion King -- Goldberg ambled out dressed as the crab from Disney's current-season critical flop, The Little Mermaid.

Later, she popped up as a caterwauling Christine in a scene from The Phantom of the Opera. Still later, she floated down from the fly space ''singing'' A Spoonful of Sugar from yet another Disney show, Mary Poppins. Funny? She should hang onto the day job.

Blatantly, the 62nd annual edition of the chronically low-rated Tonys served as a three-hour commercial for Broadway. Numbers or segments from long-running shows, as well as current shows that failed to score major nominations, were included. Performances from shows that were nominated ranged from the sublime (South Pacific) to the pitiful (Grease).

Boyd Gaines won his fourth Tony, this time for playing Herbie in the current definitive revival of Gypsy. A breathless, tearful Laura Benanti won her first Tony as best featured actress in a musical for playing the title role in the show. She expressed gratitude to her ''onstage family,'' LuPone and Gaines, and to her own mother -- ``the anti-Mama Rose.''

South Pacific director Bartlett Sher proved the third-time's-the-charm adage, winning his first Tony, after two previous nominations.

Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County is now this year's top Tony-winning play too. Rondi Reed, named best featured actress in a play for her performance as the judgmental aunt, paid tribute in her thank you speech to Letts' late father, who died after originating the role of the play's patriarch: ``This award goes, in part, to Dennis Letts. Happy Father's Day.''

Sunday wasn't such a joyous night for Raúl Esparza, the Miami-raised actor who has lost all three of his shots at the Tony. This year, an overjoyed Jim Norton won the award as best featured actor in a play, edging out Esparza's work in the revival of The Homecoming.

The farce Boeing Boeing bested a more serious trio -- Macbeth, The Homecoming and Les Liaisons Dangereuses -- to win the Tony as best revival of a play.

A dozen Tonys were bestowed in a pre-broadcast ceremony by previous Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Julie White.

In the Heights scored a win for best orchestrations for Miamian Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman; Lacamoire, speaking from the safety zone of streaming video -- in a moment picked up for the full broadcast -- said, ''Hi, we're Alex and Bill, and we just pooped our pants a little bit.'' Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler also took home a Tony for his vibrant Heights dances.

Lincoln Center Theater's lavish revival of South Pacific collected all the musical design Tonys -- for best costumes (Catherine Zuber), set (Michael Yeargan), lighting (Donald Holder) and the newest Tony award, sound (Scott Lehrer).

Design winners for plays were Todd Rosenthal for his August: Osage County set, Katrina Lindsay for her Les Liaison Dangereuses costumes, and Kevin Adams (lighting) and Mic Pool (sound) for their work on the Alfred Hitchcock-inspired The 39 Steps.

The 22-year-old Chicago Shakespeare Theater won the regional theater Tony, and a special Tony was awarded posthumously to Robert Russell Bennett, whose South Pacific orchestrations are back on Broadway this season.