'Billy Elliot' scores big at Tony Awards - Entertainment News, Tony Awards, Media - Variety

'Billy Elliot' scores big at Tony Awards - Entertainment News, Tony Awards, Media - Variety.

In the biggest and most widely anticipated sweep of Broadway's top kudos since "The Producers" devoured the competition eight years ago, "Billy Elliot" pirouetted away with 10 Tony Awards on Sunday night. Its wins included the coveted prize for new musical, as well as lead actor to the three triple-threat teens alternating in the title role. With clear favorites in each of the main races, the other three key production categories at the 63rd annual Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards were only marginally more suspenseful. Yasmina Reza's box office smash "God of Carnage" won for new play, marking the second triumph in that category for the French playwright, lauded for "Art" in 1998. Both plays were adapted into English by Christopher Hampton. The caustic comedy about two middle-class couples who unleash their snarling inner beasts over the course of a long evening of booze-fueled friction also scored actress honors for Marcia Gay Harden, as well as the prize for direction of a play to double-nominee Matthew Warchus. Iconic counterculture tuner "Hair" took the nod for musical revival, providing vindication for originating producer the Public Theater, which was shut out of Tony glory in 1969 when the premiere production lost the musical award to "1776." "Peace now, freedom now, equality now, justice forever," said euphoric Public a.d. Oskar Eustis, recounting how the org was founded 55 years ago "with the very simple idea that if the theater was going to matter, it had to be a theater for the people, and it had to talk about the things that mattered to the people." The revival's success since opening at the Hirschfeld in March has silenced all those pundits who feared the magic of last summer's Central Park staging would be lost when the show moved indoors. "Hair" has the distinction of being the only American show to win one of the top trophies this year. In the season's most competitive race, in which as many deserving shows were overlooked as were nominated, Alan Ayckbourn's bittersweet comic trilogy about tangled relationships and unfulfilled lives, "The Norman Conquests," landed the gold. Transferred to Broadway from London's Old Vic, the production was also helmed by Warchus, the first director nominated twice in the same category since A.J. Antoon in 1973. In the run-up to Tony night, gripes were aired about the early decision to relegate the play revival category to the untelevised seg, including comments from Old Vic a.d. Kevin Spacey, which may have influenced CBS to make a last-minute switch and include the award in the broadcast. But the Tonys were dominated by "Billy Elliot," the uplifting Brit import about a blue-collar kid in a strikebound 1980s Northern English mining town, whose dream of becoming a ballet dancer provides an avenue of escape from bleak reality.