Tony Awards

It was a theatrical entrance even for the Tony Awards. Actor Harvey Fierstein -- wearing a tuxedo jacket, a blue plastic inflatable inner-tube hugging his stomach, pink swim trunks, and hoisting a cocktail glass sporting a tiny umbrella - waddled on stage two hours into the awards ceremony telecast Sunday on CBS. But rather than revealing who would win the next category, Fierstein instead introduced a commercial segment that promotedRoyal Caribbean...

"Clybourne Park," the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy-drama by Bruce Norris, won the Tony for new play. The critically acclaimed play, which ran at Playwrights Horizons in New York, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles before transferring to Broadway, is inspired by "A Raisin in the Sun," by Lorraine Hansberry.  The other nominees in the category were Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities," Rick Elice's "Peter and the Starcatcher" and David Ives' "Venus in Fur. " "Clybourne" won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011.

A new category will be added to the 2006 Tony Awards: best performance by an actor or actress re-creating a role in a production. In other words, a prize for best replacement. The decision was made Thursday by the Tony Awards administration committee, which meets periodically through the season to discuss eligibility of the season's Broadway shows and other Tony business.

The Tony Awards nominating committee today announced nominations for the best of the 1984-85 Broadway season, which reflected the scarcity of musicals. No nominations were made for best actor or actress in a musical or best choreography. Named for best musical were "Big River," "Grind," "Leader of the Pack" and "Quilters." Best play nominees are "As Is," "Biloxi Blues," "Hurlyburly" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." The awards will be made June 2.

Will wonders never cease: David overcame Goliath in a rare victory at the Beacon Theatre that will force us to rethink the old truism that commerce trumps independent vision on Broadway. "Once," the little musical spun from an Irish art house film, bested "Newsies," the Disney Theatrical Productions front-runner, for the Tony Award for best musical, despite "Newsies'" greater potential for roadshow lucre. But if this season has taught us anything it's that theatrical creativity can't be suppressed by corporate forces.

Who do you like for the Tonys? For our money, the most important award at Sunday night's Tony Awards ceremony in New York will go to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which has been doing street theater for more than 20 years. If the Mime Troupe is given more than a blip on the TV broadcast, it will be a sign that the show's new producer, Don Mischer, is serious about increasing national awareness of the non-Broadway theater. Who else do you like for the Tonys?

NEW YORK -- "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" may have received only two nominations at this year's Tony Awards, but the spirit of the polarizing production hovers over the Tonys -- literally. In a bit that a person familiar with the production said will appear in Sunday night's telecast, host Neil Patrick Harris will dangle over the Beacon Theatre audience in a Spidey-esque net while presenters carry on with the show, forgetting he's up there. The bit could, of course, be viewed as a gentle jibe of sorts at the show's production woes, in which injuries and hospitalizations dogged rehearsals.

Oh, Tony Awards, for the 64th time you have come and gone, still the least celebrated but always the most rewarding of the big awards shows — the liveliest, the classiest, the best-dressed, the least prone to embarrassing moments and long dull patches devoted to some Big Idea that doesn't work at all. (You are not glitch-free, especially when it comes to microphones, but that is quite in the spirit of your real-time art.) To the extent that you are self-congratulatory — you are an award show, after all — you mix praise of the calling with exhortations to learn the craft.

Audra McDonald won the Tony Award Sunday evening for her role in the musical "The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess," at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. It is her fifth Tony but her first in the lead actress category. This revival of"Porgy and Bess"originated at the American Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts before opening on Broadway in January. Her previous Tony wins were for "A Raisin in the Sun" in 2004, "Ragtime" in 1998, "Master Class" in 1996 and "Carousel" in 1994. TONYS 2012: Red carpet | Winners & Nominees The other nominees this year in the category of lead actress in a musical were Laura Osnes in "Bonnie and Clyde," Jan Maxwell in "Follies," Cristin Milioti in "Once" and Kelli O'Hara in "Nice Work if You Can Get It. " Last year's winner in the category was Sutton Foster for the revival of "Anything Goes.

The recent production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield, won the Tony Award for revival of a play. Scott Rudin, one of the producer's of the revival, accepted the award and was joined on stage by the play's cast.  "Death of a Salesman" was one of the top-selling productions of the recent Broadway season. The show, directed by Mike Nichols, commanded top ticket prices and regularly played to full houses at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.