Tony Awards make a nod to the past and the future

NEW YORK -- Broadway looked to the future -- and to its past -- at the 2008 Tony Awards with "In the Heights," the best musical winner, and "August: Osage County," the best play, sharing the spotlight with a nearly 60-year-old "South Pacific."

Both "Heights," a salsa and rap-flavored look at the Latino immigrant experience in Upper Manhattan, and "August," a brutal dissection of a backbiting Oklahoma family, were written by artists making their Broadway debuts.

Yet it was Lincoln Center Theater's lush, lavish revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic that took more awards -- seven -- than any other show Sunday at Radio City Music Hall. Besides winning the musical-revival prize, it collected awards for debonair leading man Paulo Szot, who plays the French plantation owner Emile de Becque; director Bartlett Sher; and for the designers of its sets, costumes, lighting and sound.

Sher, in his acceptance speech, thanked not only the men who wrote the show's music and lyrics, but its original director, Joshua Logan, and James Michener, who wrote the World War II short story on which the musical (which won nine Tonys back in 1950) is based.

"They were kind of incredible men, because they seem to teach me particularly that in a way I wasn't only an artist but I was also a citizen," Sher said. "And the work that we do in these musicals or in any of these plays is not only important in terms of entertaining people, but that our country was really a pretty great place, and that perhaps it could be a little better, and perhaps, in fact, we could change."

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the Tony-winning score for "In the Heights," rapped his acceptance speech and later proclaimed, "It is like the best prom ever, dude. I have several more musicals inside my head, and I want to write them."

The show, which was first seen off-Broadway last season before moving to Broadway this year, also won awards for choreography and orchestrations.

"August" playwright Tracy Letts said, "Writing is better than acting. You get to use your words and you don't need to be there eight days a week."

And in thanking his producers, Letts took a swipe at Broadway shows that cast movie stars and winners from TV reality shows and said, "They did an amazing thing: They decided to produce an American play on Broadway with theater actors."