Host Neil Patrick Harris and retired boxer Mike Tyson perform during the opening number of the Tony Awards. (REUTERS)
Scarlett Johansson at the Tony Awards. (AP)
Cyndi Lauper made an impressive Broadway debut last night, winning a Tony for writing the score to “Kinky Boots.”
On stage at Radio City Music Hall, the singer thanked Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the musical’s book, for luring her to Broadway.
“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.
Lauper and Fierstein have given “Kinky Boots” — originally a 2005 film about a failing shoe factory that begins making drag-queen boots — a fun score and a touching book that celebrates diversity.
“Kinky Boots” also won for choreography and two technical awards, and its star, Billy Porter, won for leading man in a musical.
Porter beat his co-star Stark Sands and said he’d share the award. But “I’ll keep it at my house,” he joked.
Christopher Durang’s comical “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” won the best-play Tony.
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.
Girls were having fun elsewhere, as well. Diane Paulus and Pam MacKinnon both won for directing — marking a rare time two women have nabbed directing Tonys in the same year.
Paulus won her first Tony for directing the high-energy revival of the musical “Pippin,” which also earned its star Patina Miller a best leading actress award.
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 beating of 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.
Andrea Martin, 66, won as featured actress in a musical. Playing Pippin’s grandmother, she sings the music-hall favorite “No Time at All” and stuns audiences nightly by performing stunts that would make a woman a fraction of her age blanch.
Courtney B. Vance won for best featured actor in a play for portraying a newspaper editor opposite Hanks in “Lucky Guy.”
Judith Light won her second featured actress in a play Tony in two years, cementing the former star of TV’s “One Life to Live” and “Who’s the Boss?” as a Broadway luminary.
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.”
Cicely Tyson, 88, won best leading actress in a play for the revival of “The Trip to Bountiful.” It was the actress’ first time back on Broadway in three decades.
With Post wire services