Kinky Boots struts off with the most Tony Awards

The feel-good musical Kinky Boots, with songs by pop star and Broadway newcomer Cyndi Lauper, won a leading six 2013 Tony Awards on Sunday, including best musical, best score and best leading man.

Lauper thanked her old friend Harvey Fierstein, the book writer for La Cage aux Folles and Newsies, for luring her to Broadway. Kinky Boots also won for choreography and two technical awards, and Billy Porter won for leading man in a musical.

Porter beat Kinky Boots co-star Stark Sands and told him from the stage: "You are my rock, my sword, my shield. Your grace gives me presence. I share this award with you. I'm gonna keep it at my house! But I share it with you."

Durang, whose other works include the play Beyond Therapy, was a Tony nominee for A History of the American Film and his Miss Witherspoon was a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2006.

Lauper, known for the hit Girls Just Want to Have Fun, was part of an impressive group of women who took top honours. Diane Paulus and Pam MacKinnon both won for directing — a rare time women have won directing Tonys for both a musical and a play in the same year. (It also happened most recently at the 1998 Tonys.)

Paulus won her first Tony for directing the crackling, high-energy revival of the musical Pippin, which also earned Patina Miller a best leading actress trophy.

Canadian Andrea Martin wins

MacKinnon won for directing the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a year after earning her first nomination for helming Clybourne Park. Her revival of Edward Albee's story of marital strife won the best play revival and earned Tracy Letts his first acting Tony, an upset victory over Tom Hanks.

"The greatest job on Earth. We are the ones who say it to their faces, and we have a unique responsibility," Letts said.

Canadian-American performer Andrea Martin, 66, who won as featured actress in a musical, plays Pippin's grandmother and sings the music hall favorite No Time at All, stuns audiences nightly by doing jaw-dropping stunts that would make someone a fraction of her age blanch. It was her second Tony triumph, after her earlier win during the 1990s for her turn in My Favorite Year.

The Tonys were being broadcast live by CBS from Radio City Music Hall. Neil Patrick Harris returned for his fourth turn as emcee and leads a show featuring talented children and pulse-pounding musical numbers.

The big, opening number started with Harris simply holding a guitar in a pub like Once but quickly morphed into a flashy razzle-dazzle number that showcased performers from almost a dozen musicals — and even ex-boxer Mike Tyson dancing. Harris sang "It's bigger! Tonight it's bigger," jumped through a hoop, vanished from a box and promised a "truly legendary show" before glitter guns went off.

Who's The Boss? star wins second straight

Courtney B. Vance won for best featured actor in a play for portraying a newspaper editor opposite Tom Hanks in Lucky Guy. He dedicated his award to his mother.

Judith Light won her second featured actress in a play Tony in two years, cementing the former TV star of One Life to Live and Who's the Boss? as a Broadway star.

She followed up her win last year as a wise-cracking alcoholic aunt in Other Desert Cities with the role of a wry mother in The Assembled Parties, in which she goes from about 53 to 73 over the play's two acts.

"I want to thank every woman that I am in this category nominated with: you have made this a celebration, not a competition," she said.

Gabriel Ebert of Matilda the Musical won as best featured actor in a musical. He thanked his four Matildas and his parents, stooping down to speak into the microphone.

Cicely Tyson, 88, won the best leading actress in a play honours for the revival of The Trip to Bountiful, the show's only award on the night. It was the actress's first time back on Broadway in three decades.

"'Please wrap it up,' it says. Well, that's exactly what you did with me: You wrapped me up in your arms after 30 years," she said.

Lauper and Harvey Fierstein have given Kinky Boots — originally a 2005 film about a failing shoe factory that turns to making drag queen boots — a fun score and a touching book that celebrates diversity.

"I want to thank Harvey Fierstein for calling me up. I'm so glad I was done with the dishes and answered the phone," Lauper said.

The import Matilda the Musical is a witty, dark musical adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl that is still running in London. Its leading woman is actually a man — Bertie Carver, who plays the evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull.