Tony Award completes ‘Once’s‘ Cinderella story

“I’m shocked, and I’m thrilled,” Mr. Corden said. “No one could have imagined a better reception here for our play.” Asked if he had worried whether the show’s very British humor would appeal to American audiences, he said, “You hope, but you never know.”

Arthur Miller’s 63-year-old masterpiece, “Death of a Salesman,” won the Tony for best play revival, and Mike Nichols won his ninth Tony for directing it. He said the play has a special meaning for many in Sunday’s audience.

“There’s not a person in this theater that doesn’t know what it is to be a salesman — to be out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” he said. “As we know, a salesman has got to dream. It goes with the territory.”

In the featured-actor category in a play, Christian Borle, who hilariously plays the clumsy, overheated pirate who will later become Captain Hook in “Peter and the Starcatcher,” took home the trophy. Mr. Borle is on a roll: He also stars in the NBC series “Smash.”

In something of a vindication, the reworked version of the Gershwin opera “Porgy and Bess” managed to come home with more — and more prestigious — awards than a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”

Diane Paulus, the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, condensed and adapted it for Broadway with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and Obie Award-winning composer Diedre Murray. Purists, including Mr. Sondheim, complained that a musical treasure was being corrupted.

Theater audiences disagreed, with fans cheering the new work, which features songs such as “Summertime” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.”

Norm Lewis, who plays Porgy, said the controversy was actually a good thing.

“It started a dialogue,” he said at the post-Tony gala, “and that dialogue was about theater, not the latest shoes or something. It brought us attention.”

In featured roles, Judy Kaye won for the musical “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” in which she plays a temperance worker who likes to drink and hangs from a chandelier at one point.

Judith Light, who plays an acerbic alcoholic in “Other Desert Cities,” won for best featured actress in a play. Michael McGrath won for best actor in a featured musical role for “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

In one bit of good news for “Newsies,” composer Alan Menken, who has more Oscars than any other living person, captured his first Tony for the score.

The awards show at the Beacon Theatre was packed with musical performances designed to show a TV audience what’s available on Broadway. The numbers were highly entertaining, as was the banter — and song and dance — from Mr. Harris, whom the Tony audience adores.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the “Modern Family” star, made a cameo appearance as Mr. Harris‘ understudy in a comic number and said later at the gala that he loved the show. He also said that he had been pulling for “Once” and that Mr. Kazee was a friend.

“Wasn’t that speech about his mother amazing?” he said.

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