THEATER REVIEW: "Broadway Bound," Drury Lane Theatre, Oakbrook Terrace. ★★★

The Drury Lane Theatre's new production of Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" contains, all things considered, one of the most remarkable comedic performances I think I've ever seen.

It comes from Mike Nussbaum, who plays Ben, the dry and curmudgeonly Jewish grandfather in Simon's autobiographical coming-of-age story set in Brighton Beach, NY. Eugene, the hero of the piece and Simon's alter-ego, is a young man in the late 1940s on the cusp of finally leaving home with his brother for big careers as a comedy-writing double act. Grandfather Ben, that old socialist from the Old World, Simon's script tells us, is 77. Nussbaum is obliged to dig deep and play a character a good decade younger than himself.

I recognize that, for regular theatergoers and readers, the information that Nussbaum is still among this city's most vital, skilled and moving actors is not news. I recognize further that many people who are close to 90 remain physically vital and in tiptop mental shape, and that to express any special admiration for that feat risks the whiff of condescension. Well, to heck with that. What Nussbaum is doing here — scurrying up stairs, running around the stage, roaring, murmuring, kvetching, quietly delivering Simon's famous one-liners with exquisite comic timing — is simply remarkable. If it were happening on Broadway, it would be on front pages. If it were happening on-screen, there would be tributes at Cannes. So it's happening in Oakbrook Terrace. And that's perhaps why it's so darn fine and so darn real.

This is not only a perfect technical performance — I don't think Nussbaum blew one single syllable or one single beat Thursday night — but it is underpinned by precisely the right blend of warm sentiment and unstinting sadness that this carefully toned play, a true dramedy and inarguably one of Simon's best, demands. In this production, Ben is the moral conscience of all that we see. And, just as significantly, he gets almost all the laughs.

Nussbaum is not the only reason to see David New's production, an occasionally uneven staging that nonetheless benefits from some superb performances that take place on Collette Pollard's richly expansive, two-story setting.

The other standout here is the actor Richard McWilliams, who plays Jack, the 55-year-old father of Eugene (Max Polski) and Stanley (Jason Karasev), and a tortured man in the full throws of the kind of midlife crisis that comes when you've worked yourself to the bone every day to raise your kids and are now staring at them walking out the door and wondering what remains. The scenes between the unstinting McWilliams and the similarly determined Carmen Roman, who plays the matriarch Kate as a woman wound tight by unexpressed feelings, are blisteringly painful. So is the scene where Nussbaum's Ben confronts his son-in-law, only to discover the weakness of his own moral case. I found it riveting and deeply moving (there's also a majestic performance of quiet sadness from Paula Scrofano, who plays a member of the family who married rich but set herself adrift).

But ever since this play opened on Broadway in 1986, "Broadway Bound" (the final piece of the so-called "Eugene trilogy," also made up of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues") has been rightly perceived as Eugene's play. And it's here that New's production stutters. Simply put, Polski just doesn't develop the kind of relationship with the audience that the piece needs if we are to see these memories through his eyes. That's partly because this young actor doesn't grab control of the story, often demurring and looking away when we want to be led by him and to care about him, and it's partly because it feels like New didn't spend enough time on that crucial aspect of the proceedings. Karasev's determined Stanley dominates here — which occurs because Karasev is so energetic and honest, but also because the production doesn't create the necessary way into its own world, which has to come through Eugene.

The show is a bit like taking a profound, engaging tour with an overly reluctant guide, which I think Polski and New could fix if they put their heads together and glue together what are some magnificent individual scenes.

As it stands now, when Polski takes one last look, one last rushed look, around the room that he will never again call home, he seems to feel nothing. That makes no sense, especially given the grandfather therein.

Seth Meyers, the head writer of "Saturday Night Live" and its "Weekend Update" anchor, appears Saturday night at the Vic Theatre as part of the Just for Laughs comedy festival. It's his first Chicago appearance since 2007. But Meyers, who graduated from Northwestern University and studied at iO (formerly ImprovOlympic) began his career in the Chicago theater and comedy scene in the late 1990s. This is an edited transcript of our conversation. 

Q: I well remember reviewing your dating comedy show "Pick-Ups and Hiccups," which you performed here with Jill Benjamin, your old partner from the Boom Chicago days, in 1999. Nobody had heard of either of you before the show. But it was a well-deserved, late-night hit at the old Live Bait Theatre. And a break for you, no?

A: That was a very important thing for me, Chris. Maybe the most important thing that ever happened to me. That was the show that "Saturday Night Live" read about and saw. There is so much luck in this business. Jill is in Los Angeles now. She had a baby. I was the emcee at Jill's rehearsal dinner and I said if I hadn't met Jill, I wouldn't be sitting where I am sitting today. That was true. It took me a long time at "SNL" to get the laughs we used to get in Chicago at "Pick-Ups and Hiccups."

Q. You both reprised that show in 2007 at the Chicago Improv Festival. You seemed to be having fun that night.

A: It was so much fun. Jill hired a videographer to tape it as we have never gotten a good recording of the show. He got us from the neck down the entire show. That's hard to do. It brought me back to when we were trying to start a theater company in Chicago.

Q: But this time, you're doing stand-up. What do you plan to talk about?

A: I enjoy talking about politics a great deal. And I get to talk about myself a bit more than I do on "SNL." It's nice to have an hour on your own without the repercussions of how it will effect the sketches on either side of you. It's also really nice to do comedy again while standing up. It's weird to sit as a comedian. Being still drives me crazy. I somehow have a job that means I have to sit and wear a tie.

Q: Speaking of ties, you just got to host the White House Correspondents Associations Dinner, a blue-chip gig in the world of comedy.

A: It was terrifying. I put a lot of time into it. I used some writers from "Saturday Night Live" and also some friends of mine from outside the show. But the thing I was most worried about came true. I had to follow the President. He has great delivery.

Q: Others have offended or fallen flat. You survived. What's the secret of the gig?

A: I watched a lot of past performances, especially the ones like Conan (O'Brien) and Jon Stewart who were closer to what I could execute. You realize there is this room where you can get a bit wonkier with your jokes. We tried to tell those kinds of jokes. People appreciate it when you take some to think about who will be listening to your jokes.

Q. You seem chipper.

A: I think for a comedian I am pretty happy.

Q: How much longer on "SNL"?

A: I want to do the job for a couple more years. Being bored is the thing I'm most afraid of when I leave, Chris. I love the pace of TV.

Q. You could do movies.

A: I don't think I'm particularly good at them. It's nice when I get offered small parts. But I really think that "SNL" is what my skill set is best designed for. I feel that less on a movie. I have managed to work my job into where the only range required of me is that I have to dress up.

Q. This weekend, you're coming back to your old stomping grounds.

A: It's great to start in Chicago. It's such an affordable place to start. I lived at Sheffield and Armitage, and Clark and Oakdale by the Duke of Perth pub. My apartment always smelled of fish.

The annual summer attraction on Navy Pier, Cirque Shanghai, will not now start until June 29.

A week of performances has been lost. Refunds are available.

The problem is the roof of Navy Pier's long-troubled Skyline Stage venue. The canvas covering has been hit by severe weather over the last few months and has had to be repaired several times. The wet spring, Navy Pier said, delayed those repairs.

Scott Adsit performs in Chicago in April 2010.

Nina Metz reviewed “Adsit & Lutz” at iO on Wednesday night, starring Second City alums Scott Adsit and John Lutz, appearing in town this week as part of the Just For Laughs Festival.  The pair performs again 10:30 p.m. Thursday.  For more info go to justforlaugschicago.com or chicago.ioimprov.com.

Here is what she wrote:

Better known these days as Tina Fey’s beleaguered co-workers on NBC’s “30 Rock,” former Chicagoans Scott Adsit and John Lutz were back in town this week for a series of improv sets at iO Theater in Wrigleville, proving that even seasoned performers can occasionally find themselves tripping over awkward pauses and stuck in scenes that don’t fully work.

Not that it mattered. After an uneven start Wednesday night, the duo quickly found its groove and --unlike too many improvisers -- actually maintained an overridding theme (dunderheadedness, based on the audience suggestion “Confederacy of Dunces”). With their Abbott & Costello physicality (Adsit is tall and lean, Lutz is more Pillsbury Doughboy), they hit pay dirt with scenes depicting the most idiotic legal strategy session imaginable, as well as a pair of dark domestic dramas rooted in naturalism. (These two have the potential to do a fascinating riff on Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams if they so chose.)

Adsit in particular has all the right instincts, deploying subtle facial expressions that turned otherwise straightforward exchanges of dialogue into something deadly funny. Freed of his limited character constraints on "30 Rock," Adsit (bearded and tan and looking every inch the TV actor on hiatus) gave the kind of performance that was a reminder of the edge and polite hostility in his comedic worldview that won him so many fans during his run at Second City in the mid-'90s.  

-- Nina Metz

Due to delays in visa processing for some actors from Egypt, Syria and Iraq, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has indefinitely postponed its planned engagement of “1001 Nights,” which was to have opened June 25 on Navy Pier and will not now travel from Canada to the United States.

“1001 Nights,” the latest project of the acclaimed and globally oriented British theater director Tim Supple, was commissioned by Toronto’s Luminato Festival of Arts + Creativity, where the epic six-hour piece premiered last weekend, after an commission from the Canadian government-supported festival that exceeded $1 million. “1001 Nights” is to be a centerpiece of the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland this August.

Chicago Shakespeare was to present its U.S. premiere.

In the piece, which has attracted international attention, a large ensemble of actors from throughout the Arab world interpret “The Arabian Nights,” the familiar collection of ancient stories. The show, which has a raw, earthy quality far removed from the western stereotypes of Sinbad or Ali Baba, is performed in a variety of languages, reflecting the diversity of the Arab performers.

The project, which has endured a gestation buffeted by world events, originally was gathering in Egypt but had to move its rehearsals after trouble erupted in that nation earlier this year. After a last-minute scramble, the production rehearsed instead in Fez, Morocco. According to Supple, most of the U.S. visas for his company of about 30 have been approved. But six applications are still under a lengthy further review. And with the company scheduled to travel to Chicago on Monday, time has simply run out.

“We are all very disappointed,” Supple said, “no-one likes not to come and do a show. The company wanted to come to Chicago very much.”

According to Roy Luxford, the producer of the show for Supple’s company Dash Arts, the company did not apply for its visas in Morocco because it was advised by the U.S. authorities to apply for visas as a group in Toronto (Canadian visas were granted in Morocco without incident). Speaking before a performance here Tuesday night, he said that various last-minute entreaties were being made to those with influence who might rush processing for those actors whose applications had gone under further review. But after several days on tenterhooks, the plug was pulled late Wednesday night.

“It reflects tight times,” said Supple. “I’d like every country to embrace every artist I am working with.” In this case, of course, Supple, whose last project (a version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) involved actors from India, is working with actors from countries whose nationals often come under extra scrutiny when they apply for entry into the U.S.

 “My desire,” said Luminato artistic director Chris Lorway, explaining his decision to make a major investment in the piece, the center of this year’s Luminato, “was to shake up the perception of the Arab world as a homogenous place.” Criss Henderson, the executive director of Chicago Shakespeare, said the Chicago company had waited as late as possible to make the decision but had been left with no choice and the need to notify its subscribers. Henderson said he hoped that the production could be rescheduled at the earliest opportunity” and expressed his “undiminished commitment” to the project. Supple said a world tour was planned, including an extensive tour of the Far East, and that he would aim to come to Chicago as part of the U.S. leg of that tour, currently slated for 2012.

“The United States welcomes legitimate travelers,” said a State Department official on Thursday morning. “The Department of State regrets that the performer’s cases could not be processed in time for the performance."

As things now stand, the company will leave Canada on Monday, or thereabouts, and reconvene in Scotland later this summer. In Chicago, ticketbuyers can either get a refund or bank their ticket for the rescheduled performance. On Wednesday night in Toronto, the company performed the second three-hour segment of the piece, not yet knowing that their U.S. premiere was not going to happen.

Director Leigh Silverman and David Henry Hwang at a rehearsal for "Chinglish," running through July 24 at the Goodman Theatre.

At the recent Printers Row Lit Fest in June, a theater fan asked playwright David Henry Hwang to provide more details on his process of writing plays. America's foremost Asian-American writer thought about the question for a while, then said he always likes to pay stylistic homage to the style of a past work, and always likes to begin his plays with an interesting question.

In the case of “M. Butterfly,” Hwang's most famous play and the prescient story of a powerful, middle-aged French diplomat who becomes … well … compromised by this relationship with an “actress” of the Beijing Opera, an “actress” who does not immediately reveal all of her diplomat-ensnaring cards, the play in Hwang's head was Peter Shaffer's “Equus.”

The question, though, related to the hapless diplomat: “How could he not have known?”

Hwang's newest play, “Chinglish,” which premieres at the Goodman Theatre on June 26, seems, on the face of it, to have a lot in common with “M Butterfly.” It follows the misadventures of an American businessman in China — What play or movie has ever depicted an American businessman at ease in China? — and, once again, a Westerner finds himself manipulated by the wiles of the East, in this case a beautiful government official who also does not reveal all of her aces. The play, Hwang said later, was inspired by “Glengarry Glen Ross.” And the question?

“It was,” he said, “how do I feel about the rise of China?”

BROADWAY REVIEW 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' Plays on Broadway at the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St. Call 877-250-2929 or visit ticketmaster.com.

NEW YORK -- "Spidey 2.0," as the once-pretentious, hitherto-arty, forever-costly musical called "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" is now colloquially known, is quite startlingly different from the disastrous original incarnation of the comic-book musical that humbled Bono and The Edge and ate Julie Taymor alive.

Given the limited amount of fix-'er-up time, and the depths of incoherence from which this show had to rise, 2.0 is a remarkable achievement for those who have toiled for coherence and a measure of absolution in this dangerously tangled web. For all the abiding limitations, clashing sensibilities and thudding holes, it should, for the record, be noted as such. And if you were the one writing those big checks and hoping against hope that something Vegas-popular, London-duplicable, family-friendly and appealing to Gotham tourists who don't speak a lick of English would emerge from the biggest heap of theatrical mishegoss since the Astor Place Riot in 1849, you would be breathing a sigh of relief as that opening-night curtain rang down Tuesday.

So let's summarize the changes since I (and several other critics) last saw this show in February and since a new writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and a new "creative consultant," Philip William McKinley, joined the grim party. (Bono and The Edge did not have to suffer the indignities of score doctors, although that would not have been a bad idea, and Taymor retains credit as director and writer, with Glen Berger also keeping his name on the truly catastrophic book he originally wrote with Taymor.)
You can now track the story with ease, which for a musical about a comic-book hero, as distinct, say, from a Chekhovian malcontent, is a good thing. Gone are the endless series of meta-theatrical frames.

They're on the same ignominious slag heap as the nerd chorus who once served most to confuse.
Instead, you now get to know a moody science geek named Peter Parker (Reeve Carney), witness the way he gets bullied by other kids, see him fall for a pretty girl named Mary Jane (Jennifer Damiano), understand how he gets special powers from an escaped mutant spider after he visits Dr. Osborn's lab, appreciate that he wants to use his status for good, watch him fight the Green Goblin (Patrick Page) and the self-aggrandizing proprietor of the Daily Bugle (Michael Mulheren), negotiate the pull of Mary Jane versus the pull of saving the world, and eventually decide that Spider-Man is well-positioned, unlike the rest of us nerds, to have it all. It ain't rocket science or the Metropolitan Opera, but at least it's clear.

Arachne, the spider that once dominated this show as Patti LuPone dominated "Gypsy," has been relegated to a little charming mythic underpinning, a smidgen of goddesslike inspiration and parental encouragement. She's now a bit like Mufassa in "The Lion King." And she no longer sings about her shoes. Because, as Taymor and Berger so spectacularly failed to appreciate, we didn't care about her shoes. Or her.

Taking a cue from those pesky early reviews, Aguirre-Sacasa and McKinley focus relentlessly on the simple love story that we might actually care about, dialing back most digressions and replacing them with a variety of audience-pleasing amusements.

You could have seen 1.0 and completely missed any and all webs. Now the sticky stuff comes to you in your seat. The more dangerous stunts have been axed but the motion amped up, the crowd-pleasing flying comes off without an obvious hitch (at Friday's press show at least), and "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" generally takes its place as a mainstream, high-tech, megabudget entertainment. There were promgoers not far behind me Friday, lapping it up like a new downloadable app.

But it's not entirely accurate or fair to say that Aguirre-Sacasa and McKinley merely went for the lowest common denominator. It's only partly accurate. Page's Green Goblin and Mulheren's editor Jameson are actually less cartoonish now -- they're more likable villains (another good thing), and Page looks to be having a little fun. He deserves it.

The score, of course, remains unsatisfying. Especially its ballads. In fact, its theatrical limitations are even more glaring now that the rest of the show has been retooled. Aside from the songs "Rise Above" and "A Freak Like Me" (which starts the second act off with some wit and unity), the melancholy, repetitive, climax-free music mostly feels out of sync with the zippier material -- which has now shrewdly taken on much self-aware humor, further pushing it away from the score. The Green Goblin now announces himself as a kind of "Green Goblin 2.0," the result of a multimillion-dollar redo, and wryly pokes fun at millions spent and the scores of newspaper gossips kept in full foam by flailing stuntmen.

That's inevitable, I suppose. Taymor tried to turn "Spider-Man" into an art piece in a bubble inside her own head -- a high-end meditation that probed the mythic roots of our cultural heroes and that wanted to offer nothing that was easy. It did not work because (among many other well-documented issues) there simply was no center to the hubristic and relativistic onion built by Taymor and Berger (who was the wrong kind of partner for Taymor, taking her only further to the edge, and I don't mean The Edge). No Broadway show thrives without an honest, accessible core that can be affixed to a marquee.

The original vision is gone now. Almost all Taymor's signature scenes are either cut back or rejiggered as little visual diversions from the story, as distinct from the story itself. There are a couple of exceptions: Her idea for multiple Spider-men still works quite terrifically, and there are fleeting moments of beauty and genuine progressive invention. Still, I don't think "Spidey 2" will win the belated love of Broadway's chattering classes, but then they don't love comics as a rule.

For those who do -- or those for whom flying around to impress a girl and save the world sounds like a Saturday night of all Saturday nights -- Broadway now has an efficient, very expensive, very new comic-book musical with cool effects, some amusements, a brooding hero in Carney, a somewhat shellshocked but spunky heroine in Damiano, and, I predict, a line out the door for a good long while. And, of course, pending clones.

Bono and The Edge are stuck back in the prior show. Taymor will peer out from the seats and see shards of her vision. But that's all ancient history. Just ask Arachne.

THEATER REVIEW: "The Last Act of Lilka Kadison," Lookingglass Theatre Company. ★★½

About halfway through “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison”—the final show of the 2010-11 season at the Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre—I found myself reflecting on the deep perils of dramatizing the memories of older folk.

It’s a tempting perennial, of course. Like cinema, theater has an inherently close relationship with memory. But I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat in a darkened room and watched a senior citizen—sometimes suffused with nostalgia, sometimes racked with regret, sometimes both—drift off into some kind of snooze or reverie and interact with the dancing shadows of their younger life, invariably including their beautiful younger selves, careening across a stage. The motivation is usually a desire to honor and celebrate the life of a remarkable person, be she famous or everyday. But, still, these memories are very difficult to do well. Unintentional condescension lurks at every wrong turn.

And although this very spirited new work at the Lookingglass is full of promise, sentiment and affection, it needs a good deal more development. One useful starting place might be the very beginning, and the provision of a reason as to why the central character of Lilith Fisher, who seems very much alive and well at 87 years old in California, is somehow reliving her difficult past in the Poland of 1939 at this, and only this, particular moment. The other might be the answering of the question as to why Lilith, played by the skilled Marilyn Dodds Frank and represented here as shrewd, funny, hip to modernity and whip-smart, isn’t just telling her nurse (and, by extension, us) about her memories in rational terms, rather than dancing with a handsome ghost from the world of the Yiddish theater.

Of course, ghosts are more theatrical. The trick lies in how they are integrated into mortal, truthful soil.

In this very earnest 80-minute piece by the writing team of Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar, Andrew White, Abbie Phillips and Heidi Stillman—a striking number of authors, for a non-musical at least—Lilka Kadison is a fictional creation. But then she is based on the stories of Jewish people from all over the world, as recounted on the popular public-radio series, “One People, Many Stories.” The show was inspired by the work of Johanna Cooper, the late broadcaster who frequently was drawn to Jewish stories.

The set-up here is that Lilith is chatting with Menelik Kahn (Usman Ally), her new in-home help and a man of Pakistani origin and his own tales of persecution. As played with typical wit and lightness by Usman Ally, her helper is trying to get Lilith to clean up her place and generally conform to various rules that home-helps and their bosses try to impose on their charges. But as she resists, her junk and tchotchkes (with the help of the designers Jacqueline and Richard Penrod) transform into a vibrant Old World marketplace, occupied by Ben Ari Adler (Chance Bone), a young and handsome theatrical storyteller, and a budding star of the ever-mobile Yiddish stage who uses a toy theater to tell the story of King Solomon—a story that contains many lessons for the young in this most perilous of Jewish moments. There in Lilith’s living room, we meet young Lilka Kadison, an embodiment of Lilith’s younger self and a conservative girl whose conformist life is blown apart first by the flowering of the story of love, and then by Nazi tanks.

As played by the resolute and wholly honest Nora Fiffer, Lika is a very appealing character (Bone’s less complex Ben Ari Adler does not seem fully worthy of her). Still, a couple of scenes in particular are deeply moving. One is the snapshot of the moment when Fiffer’s young woman, having just watched her family disappear, suddenly finds herself alone with a man and the horrors of the world; she realizes that she has about thirty seconds to grow up into a woman and it makes you catch your breath.

Another is the play’s emotional contemplation of how Jewish children, about to suffer the most unspeakable thing ever done en masse to children, could still find truth and help in ancient stories. This is hardly the first piece to probe how art—in this case, Chance’s little travelling theater of two performers—could provide crucial balm and more abiding meaning in an exploding world, but it does so with some eloquence and simplicity. All Lilka’s acts—first, last, the ones betwixt and between--feel authentic and engrossing.

For all its clever flourishes and bravura theatricality, Kersnar’s direction is less certain, though, when it comes to the simpler matter of both dividing and integrating his two worlds. It is never clear, for example, whether Menelik sees the supernatural activities in Lilith’s room. He does seem to notice when Ben Ari Adler sends things flying, but he says little and the rules aren’t clear as to whether or not this is all in Lilith’s head. Even as boundaries soften and questions merge, we still must feel like we are getting an explanation.

There is much—very much—of worth here. Now, instead of the kind of sycophantic, pageant-like opening that a forceful soul like Lillith actually would despise—for it is a cliché in grant-friendly plays of this sort—”The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” needs to open and proceed with the kind of sharpness, edge, complexity and drama that would make it worthy of its own central character, a survivor now and forever.

A Red Orchid Theatre, located in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago, has announced a three-show season for 2011-12 (one less show than last season). It's a slate of dark comedies, said Kirsten Fitzgerald, the artistic director. Here's the line-up of the 19th season:

• The Chicago Premiere of Gina Gionfriddo’s Off-Broadway comedy "Becky Shaw," directed by Damon Kiely. Opening in September.
• The world premiere of of a new play from ensemble member Brett Neveu, entitled "Megacosm." Dado directs the show, opening in January.
• A new staging by Shade Murray of Chicago playwright Marisa Wegrzyn’s "The Butcher of Baraboo," the zesty Wisconsin comedy first seen at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (and later in New York). Kirsten Fitzgerald and Natalie West star in the show, slated for March.

Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway, also has a new slate (the company's 24th season).

• Harold Pinter's "Old Times," opening in October under the direction of Kimberly Senior.
• Robert E. Sherwood's "The Petrified Forest," directed by Murray and opening in Feburary.
• John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi," directed by Brandon Bruce and slated for April.

"The Book of Mormon" knocked down the door of the 65th annual Tony Awards at New York's Beacon Theatre Sunday night, snagging a worshipful total of nine Tonys, including best musical. In the winner's circle: composers Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone, directors Casey Nicholaw and Parker, and an emotional newcomer-no-more named Nikki M. James, now a best supporting actress winner. 

There were no unexpected miracles. In the slightly more contested category of best play, the sentimental English favorite "War Horse" still ran past the post, winning five Tonys, including a best direction Tony for Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris' bravura piece of emotional staging. Most other awards also went as expected, including a best revival of a musical Tony for "Anything Goes" -- along with a Tony for its star Sutton Foster -- and best revival of a play for the searing production of Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart." 

Parker thanked his loyal "South Park" fans, many of whom have been flocking to "Mormon," Broadway's hottest and funniest show. "Without you guys," he said, accurately in many ways, "we wouldn't be here." Foster, meanwhile, thanked all of her teachers. And her dresser. 

Mark Rylance, winner for best actor in a play for his fine turn in "Jerusalem," delivered a typically strange and appealing speech about walking through walls. Norbert Leo Butz, winner for best actor in a musical, was one of the few bright spots for "Catch Me If You Can." 

Two fine Hollywood actresses added to their mantles. Frances McDormand won best actress honors Tony for her powerfully rooted work as a working-class Bostonian in the play "Good People." Ellen Barkin, who won best supporting actress in a play for her blistering Broadway debut in "The Normal Heart," paid emotional tribute to playwright and AIDS activist Kramer, saying he had taught her that "one person can make a difference in the world." Her co-star John Benjamin Hickey, a Tony winner in the best supporting actor category for his moving work, said of Kramer, "those of us still standing, Larry, can never repay you." 

During the broadcast, hosted in familiar and surprise-free fashion by a smooth and relaxed Neil Patrick Harris, most Americans got their first look at Daniel Radcliffe in musical-comedy mode: The chirpy, apparently fearless star of the Harry Potter movies acquitted himself well in the song-and-dance number "The Brotherhood of Man," as he does onstage in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Radcliffe wasn't on tenterhooks; he wasn't even nominated. 

Presumably, a number of Mormon viewers got their first actual look at the Tony-winning show that has been making headlines. Whatever they thought, the number "I Believe" was shrewdly chosen for a TV show intended to promote Broadway's current and future wares as much as celebrate achievements -- the song captured the combination of withering satire and genuine respect for faith that has made the show a hit.

Actress Brooke Shields, seated in the audience, was less shrewdly chosen, blowing a musical segment in Harris' mostly witty opening number, a spoof declaring that a "broadened" Broadway is no longer "just for gays," one that contained a couple of words that parents across America were probably less than delighted to be explaining to their theater-loving children. No in-home explanation was necessary for actor Bobby Cannavale's unheard contribution to the ditty -- the CBS censor took care of that. Mr. Bleep got another workout during "The Book of Mormon" segment, but it would have been wrong to play it any other way. The liveliest number of the night was the disco classic "It's Raining Men" from "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." Its writer, Paul Shaffer, was on hand to introduce it. Who knew?

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel knew that the Lookingglass Theatre was going to be the winner of the regional theater Tony, as previously announced. In a statement put out Sunday night he congratulated Lookingglass for "its success in delivering quality, original theater for all to enjoy."

Kathleen Marshall said she planned to change the name of her twins to "Antoinette and Perry," in honor of her Tony victory as best choreographer of "Anything Goes." Meanwhile, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," now the first Broadway opening of the 2011-12 season, took it on the chin all night. Bono and The Edge poked fun at their missing the awards show's deadlines. "In rock 'n' roll," The Edge wryly observed, "deadlines are just the lies your manager tells you to get you back on the bus."

But the Tonys aren't rock 'n' roll. They're all Broadway. "I sent Bono a congratulatory cable," said Harris, firing off a series of gags aimed at the accident-plagued superhero spectacle. "It snapped."