Clybourne Park

Credit: Brad Barket/Getty; Inset: Jason Kempin/Getty

Neil Patrick Harris Calls Tonys 'Fifty Shades of Gay'

Originally posted 06/10/2012 11:10PM

Broadway celebrated itself Sunday night – and crowned Once and playwright Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park as the season's best musical and drama, in a star-studded evening that third-time host Neil Patrick Harris called "the 66th annual Tony Awards, or, as we like to call it, Fifty Shades of Gay."

Clybourne Park, which also won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize, takes its cues from Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, about developments in a Chicago neighborhood after the Younger family has moved in and moved on. The best play Tony was that show's only win; it was bested in the straight play category by Peter and the Starcatcher, a kind of prequel to Peter Pan, which won five.

The modest Dublin-set musical Once, based on the independent 2006 movie by the same title, practically swept the musical category, winning eight Tonys, including best musical, best musical direction and best musical actor for Steve Kazee.