`The Lion' Is King -- Nevertheless, It Was Ladies' Night As Tonys Honor Broadway's Best

It was a night of girl power, Brit-Irish power and lion power at this year's Tony Awards ceremony, televised nationally last night from Radio City Music Hall in New York. And with stage-struck TV-talk-show-host Rosie O'Donnell holding forth as emcee, it was also a night of semi-raunchy humor and Broadway-style song-belting.

In Broadway's busiest and most lucrative season in years, "The Lion King," the dazzling new stage version of the Disney animated film fable, emerged from an intense rivalry with the hit Americana musical "Ragtime" to earn the most 1998 Tony Awards for Broadway excellence. "Lion King" received six Tonys in all, capped off by the grand prize for best new musical of the 1997-98 season.

The Disney-produced show was also rightly honored for its lighting design, choreography and scenery. And two medallions went to "Lion King's" innovative director and costumer, Julie Taymor, the first female to win a Tony for staging a Broadway musical. As director of Martin McDonagh's bleak Irish comedy, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," Garry Hynes became the first woman honored for staging a non-musical on the Great White Way.

To make it pretty much a clean sweep at the top for the female contingent, French-Iranian author Yasmina Reza's sophisticated study of male friendship, "Art," copped the prize for best new play. It did so in a season when "legit" dramas (albeit, mostly ones penned by foreign writers) staged something of a comeback on Broadway.

As for the acting honors, nearly all were accepted by performers with cross-Atlantic accents. British-bred Natasha Richardson and Scottish actor Alan Cumming earned Tonys for their lead performances in the punkish new version of "Cabaret," the unsurprising victor in the best-musical-revival category. Three-fourths of the all-Irish cast of "Beauty Queen of Leenane" (Marie Mullen, Anna Manahan and Tom Murphy) nabbed awards. And Australia native Anthony LaPaglia collected a Tony for his mesmerizing turn as a conflicted Brooklyn dockworker in Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge," judged the finest play revival of the season.

Though on the musical veldt "Lion King" ruled, "Ragtime" (now playing in Vancouver, B.C. and expected at Seattle's Paramount Theatre next season) came away with several key Tony Awards also. Playwright Terrence McNally's book for "Ragtime," based on a historical pastiche novel by E.L. Doctorow, snatched a prize. So did the show's orchestrations, musical score (by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty), and featured actress Audra McDonald. (Ron Rifkin, best featured performer for "Cabaret," was the only other American to earn an acting Tony this year.)

For the second consecutive year, the Tony hoopla aired in two segments: public-television stations transmitted the first hour of the ceremony and CBS stations broadcast the final two hours. Local PBS affiliate KCTS-TV made the bizarre choice to show the first hour live from New York at 5 p.m., thereby leaving a gap of several hours before CBS affiliate KIRO-TV transmitted the rest of the (tape-delayed) proceedings at 9 p.m. (Can't KCTS spare a sliver of prime time once a year for this occasion?)

That clumsy scheduling probably severely limited local viewership of the PBS coverage, which was informative and enjoyable (as well as commercial-free). It featured jazzy documentary film montages of Broadway rehearsals with articulate comments about their work from many of the nominees, as well as the live presentation of more than half of the Tonys.

Like last year, the CBS portion was more about glossed-up show biz, presided over by Numero Uno EveryFan O'Donnell. Rosie good-naturedly kicked things off with a self-spoofing number about wanting to be a musical-theater diva, while three bona fide divas, Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone and Jennifer Holiday, offered tonsil-scorching samplings of their greatest Broadway hits. (A little of each went a long way.)

More rousing were some of the excerpts from the nominated Broadway musicals, particularly the nasty, noir-ish "Cabaret" opener "Willkommen," complete with Cumming's lasciviously androgynous, crotch-grabbing Berlin emcee, and a heroin-chic cadre of chorus girls. Next to this segment, the chirpy kinder in the revival of "The Sound of Music" seemed like visitors from another planet instead of just across the Alps.

Throughout the show, O'Donnell supplied a hit-and-miss spray of topical and sometimes tasteless quips, including jests about her elaborately molded dress ("I'm wearing more tape and wire under here than Linda Tripp,"), and the failure of pop composer Paul Simon's Broadway musical "The Capeman" ("He's writing a new show titled, `It Ain't as Easy as It Looks' ")..

The acceptance speeches were mercifully pithy and occasionally stirring, as when a trembling Natasha Richardson dedicated her award to her late father, director Tony Richardson ("This is a Tony, after all"). And in the PBS segment, when playwright McNally thanked the theater community for backing him in a recent censorship battle over his controversial new play, "Corpus Christi." Several theater folk referred to their roots in the nonprofit theater sector, which, given the number of current Broadway shows that started off in smaller, non-commercial venues, was certainly apropos.

By keeping O'Donnell on tap throughout, keeping the acceptance speeches to the minimum and maintaining a slick, brisk pace (which faltered only when "Freak" star John Leguizamo's body microphone sputtered), the show's CBS main event may have held on to the high ratings logged for last year's telecast. We'll soon find out.

But does the Tony Award fol-de-rol actually spur TV viewers to get off the couch and fork over for theater tickets, as the co-sponsoring American Theatre Wing and the League of American Theatres and Producers intend? You have to wonder, given that even the glorious "Circle of Life" number from "The Lion King" looked a little anemic on the box as opposed to the carnival of wonders it offers when you're watching it from orchestra center. The Tony show may be one of the more agreeable award extravaganzas on television these days. But when it comes to live theater there's still no substitute for the real thing.

The winners were:

Play: "Art" by Yasmina Reza.

Musical: "The Lion King."

Book of a musical: Terrence McNally, "Ragtime."

Original score: Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, "Ragtime."

Revival-play: "A View From the Bridge."

Revival-musical: "Cabaret."

Actor-play: Anthony LaPaglia, "A View From the Bridge."

Actress-play: Marie Mullen, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

Actor-musical: Alan Cumming, "Cabaret."

Actress-musical: Natasha Richardson, "Cabaret."

Featured actor-play: Tom Murphy, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

Featured actress-play: Anna Manahan, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

Featured actor-musical: Ron Rifkin, "Cabaret."

Featured actress-musical: Audra McDonald, "Ragtime."

Director-play: Garry Hynes, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

Director-musical: Julie Taymor "The Lion King."

Scenic design: Richard Hudson, "The Lion King."

Costume design: Julie Taymor "The Lion King."

Lighting design: Donald Holder, "The Lion King."

Choreography: Garth Fagan, "The Lion King."

Orchestrations: William David Brohn, "Ragtime."