THE TONY AWARDS SHINE IN NEW YORK CITY

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MARCY MACDONALD AT THE TONY'S

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PHOTOS BY: ANN WATT

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Christian Siriano

"Tony! Tony!" is how Maria called it in that long ago Tony award winning production of WEST SIDE STORY. At this year's Tony Awards, the barrio-based IN THE HEIGHTS was the upset winner for Best Musical, the "little show about home" straight from the hood and the heart of creator/star Lin-Manual. Not bad for a production that began life at Weslyan, his alma mater. It went on to win three more: Best Original Score, Choreography and Orchestration. Not the only upset of the Antionette Perry Awards, Harry Haun (Playbill's most famous voter/writer), blanched at almost every award delivered before show time to SOUTH PACIFIC another old-fashioned, there's-no-place-like home-musical that washed seven Tony awards into Paulo Szot's enchanted evening in this, his Broadway debut. Next, with five Tonies, was AUGUST; OSAGE COUNTY, a blessing from Steppenwolf (think Second City) that also won the Best Actress award for Deanna Dunagan. PASSING STRANGE -- strangely passed by, except for the award for the Best Book of a Musical -- started out life in downtown saloons before it's pre-Broadway run at Joe's Pub. Patti LuPone who last Tonied in 1980 for EVITA sang her way into a Best Actress in a Musical Tony for GYPSY, a lucky show for co-stars Laura Benanti (Gypsy Rose Lee) and Boyd Gaines (Herbie-the-husband). As expected Britain's Mark Rylance was rewarded for being an efficient juggler of stewardesses in BOEING BOEING. But there has to be a special award created for the one person who really pulled this hodge podge of Tony creaters and winners together because there is nothing like a dame called Whoopi Goldberg.