Tony Awards 2009

Credit: Andrew H. Walker/Getty

UpdatePosted 06/08/2009 09:00PM

Bret Michaels Injured at the Tony Awards

Originally posted 06/07/2009 11:30PM

Broadway did what Broadway does best to open Sunday night's 63rd annual Tony Awards – delivering an electrifying musical number that starred Dolly Parton, Elton John, Liza Minnelli, the casts of West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Pal Joey, Shrek, 9 to 5: The Musical, Next to Normal, Rock of Ages and Billy Elliot and finished off with a love-in: a rousing rendition of "Let the Sun Shine" from the new best-revival production of Hair that got all 6,000 attendees inside Radio City Music Hall dancing in their seats.

When the spectacle concluded, the evening's host, How I Met Your Mother star Neal Patrick Harris, called it "the biggest and most expensive number in the history of the Tonys. That is why I am your host tonight."

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Filed Under: Tony Awards 2009, Billy Elliot: The Musical, God of Carnage, Angela Lansbury

Credit: Jewel Samad/Getty, Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

What Hugh Jackman Told Neil Patrick Harris

Originally posted 06/05/2009 12:00PM

Neil Patrick Harris may be no stranger to the Broadway stage, but how will TV's How I Met Your Mother star fare as host of Sunday's Tony Awards?

"I'll probably be a little more joke-y," Harris, 35, told PEOPLE Thursday during a break from rehearsing the Great White Way's annual rite of spring. "I'm going to angle a little bit more towards Jon Stewart in a perfect world."

As for having to fill shoes impressively worn in years past by the Sexiest Man Alive, Harris says, "Hugh Jackman did the [opening] production number very well, so to try and replicate [that], I worry that it would seem like I'm trying to repeat. I wouldn't want to be a repeater."