Anything Goes Musical

The one Tony for David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People , an acclaimed play about an out-of-work single mother in Boston, went to Frances McDormand, who played the hardscrabble heroine of the comic drama.

Kramer's prescient play about fear, love and activism in the early days of the AIDS first surfaced in the mid-1980s — in time in which it was set. Back then, some called it a rant rather than a play, but the years have been kind to the work — audiences, critics and the Tony voters have embraced the drama about (as director George C. Wolfe has put it) a monster stalking a community.

Kramer, whose anti-hero Ned Weeks is inspired by his own history as an AIDS activist, said in an acceptance speech, "To gay people everywhere, whom I love so, The Normal Heart is our history. I could not have written it had not so many of us so needlessly died. Learn from it and carry on the fight. Let them know that we are a very special people, an exceptional people and that our day will come."

Mark Rylance, already a Tony Award winner for Boeing-Boeing, was named Best Actor in a Play for his sweaty, brash performance as former daredevil who spins tall tales in the celebrated three-hour character study Jerusalem by English playwright Jez Butterworth.

The Tonys, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, were held at the Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.