NEW YORK -- Something like 250 people were watching Sunday's Tony Awards at Carmine's, a large theater district restaurant on 44th Street, when it was announced that David Hyde Pierce had upset expectation and won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.

Richard Drew, Associated Press Christine Ebersole won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in "Grey Gardens." Read further and learn more about those Harry Winston earrings. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Tony Awards Photo Gallery and Audio Clips 'Spring,' 'Utopia' coast through Tony Awards Complete list of Tony Award winners Listen in Hear theater stars at the Tonys. There are seven more audio clips connected to pictures in the photo gallery (above). Here are two: Fox Chapel's Christian Borle, nominated as a supporting actor in "Legally Blonde," talks about Pittsburgh. Frank Langella, named best actor for his portrayal of Richard Nixon in "Frost/Nixon," talks about himself and his character.

The place erupted "like a volcano," one participant told me when I arrived, long after the telecast had ended. The crowd, of course, was the cast, crew, production team and friends of "Curtains," the Kander & Ebb musical comedy in which Pierce won his award playing Frank Cioffi, a Boston homicide detective and amateur thespian.

So far that evening, the mighty tide running for "Spring Awakening" had shut "Curtains" out of even winning the awards for book or choreography (for Rob Ashford), for which it was clearly in the running. But at the party, at about 12:45 a.m., the place was still buzzing, carrying on as if they were winners, as, in a sense, they were, with their leading man (already a popular and well-known actor) now wearing the Broadway crown.

Roger Berlin, one of Broadway's busiest producers, said Pierce's Tony would definitely help business. (Pierce had told me he is contracted to stay with the show at least until February.) Berlin said plans are already under way for a national tour, starting in September.

Ashford introduced me to "Curtains" composer John Kander, a Broadway great. Working in the Tony press room means you don't get to see the whole show or even the whole telecast, but Ashford confirmed that the standing "O" for Kander was the only one of the night.

Kander mentioned a friend who has just taken a job in musical theater at Point Park and asked Ashford about the school's success, which Ashford said started with its dance program and then spread throughout its conservatory. One example is Nili Bassman, performing in the show; another is Megan Sikora, though she had left the party by then. Another ensemble member, Jerome Vivona, is married to Pittsburgh's Michelle O'Steen.

Tracing my steps backward, when the press room action closed down, I had gone first to the "Radio Golf" party at La Masseria, figuring it was smaller and might not last as long. August Wilson's widow, Constanza Romero, had left already with daughter Azula, but I talked with the actors and with producers Tamara Tunie and Jack Viertel. No one seemed especially downhearted over not winning ("The Coast of Utopia" swept the night for plays), though they did regret Anthony Chisholm's not getting the supporting actor Tony for which he was very much in the running.

Viertel said that the play "clearly means something to people, and we'll do everything we can to bring it to as many people as possible." That's why he became a producer, he said, even though "Broadway's a hard place for a challenging play, and more so now than ever."

It wasn't the time to ask how long "Radio Golf" might still run, but my own guess is that Pittsburghers planning to see it should try to do so in June. Of course, there's sure to be an eventual production at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. And Viertel has an even better idea, for which he thinks the Public would be a perfect venue: a la "Coast of Utopia" or Shakespeare's history plays, to stage "Gem of the Ocean," "Two Trains Running" and "Radio Golf" as a trilogy, since those three plays, set respectively in the Hill of 1904, 1969 and 1997, have interlocking characters, family relationships and themes.

Broadway 'community'

My Tony day began about 6 p.m. on the red carpet. Back then, Ashford said he and the "Curtains" company were high from the dress rehearsal that morning, when all the shows were together at Radio City Music Hall, "cheering and applauding each other. It doesn't feel like a competition, it feels like a community. That's still in our hearts and our heads right now."

Win or lose, he said, "to get to walk the line with [creators] Rupert Holmes and John Kander, I can't complain."

Romero was there at the start, with Azula. She said she was feeling "nervous, excited, joyous, victorious -- missing the heavyweight playwright, August Wilson -- and very proud of everybody's work." She also talked about the very different feeling when she had been there two years before, Tony-nominated herself for her costumes for "Gem of the Ocean," but without her husband, who was at home awaiting what would turn out to be his diagnosis of liver cancer.

Veteran Wilson actor Chisholm had a spiritual take: "August was my friend [and] died writing this play. I was one of the pallbearers. And yet ... he is among us in every little pore and molecule and fiber of our surroundings right now. ... Journeying with this play through seven cities and ending up in New York, and being received the way it has, I'm soaring with the angels."

I greeted Pittsburgher Tamara Tunie as a producer of "Radio Golf," but she was a producer of "Spring Awakening." It was her first time at the Tonys, she said, and she was there "for both the shows that I felt passionate enough to get really involved in."

A lot of the red carpet life was created by the "Spring Awakening" company. That's what happens when you have a dozen or more performers, all 18 to 24, along with many friends, all proceeding excitedly in a boiling mass.

One of the most ebullient was Lea Michelle, the young lead, who has one of the delicate but frank sex scenes in the musical, which is about hypocrisy and sexual repression among teenagers in 1891 Germany. She said the show has been so enthusiastically accepted by the grab bag of New Yorkers and tourists from all over that she thinks it will play anywhere -- and she jokingly warned off the teenage girls who swoon over her co-star, Jonathan Groff.

Later in the press room, the "Spring Awakening" producers expressed their amazement at how the show has taken off, when they produced it "not as a commercial venture but a labor of love." They also said a national tour starting this fall has already booked 72 weeks (they wouldn't confirm if Pittsburgh was in the mix yet), and there are separate companies already planned (each in a different language) for England, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Japan, Korea and Israel.

Back on the red carpet, Jonathan Wright, who has a homosexual scene in the musical, said he had heard from educators "that Gideon [Glick] and I are saving a lot of people's lives each night by doing that scene," helping people deal with their own fears of difference.

Fox Chapel's Christian Borle, nominated as supporting actor in "Legally Blonde," said he was "thinking of Pittsburgh tonight a lot, what I would possibly say if I was called up onto that stage. A lot of it is [about] teachers from Falk and St. Edmund's and Shady Side and Carnegie Mellon."

Two of my favorite encounters were with Frank Langella, who doesn't look anything like Richard Nixon, and the lovely Xanthe Elbrick, who doesn't look anything like the boy she was nominated for playing in "Coram Boy."

Langella was very gracious, as you'd expect from the awardee who made the classiest thank-you speech of the night. He's staying with "Frost/Nixon" just 10 more weeks, then has a "48-hour break" before starting two months on the movie. He confessed he "would never have imagined in my wildest dreams" he'd ever play Nixon.

In the press room

Playwright Tom Stoppard was, of course, especially articulate, noting that he was first produced on Broadway 40 years ago, "when there were ashtrays clipped on the backs of the seats and authors got 10 percent of the gross."

The last two visitors to the press room were best actress and actor in a musical, Christine Ebersole and Pierce, who is obviously as much in love with musical theater as is the Boston homicide detective he plays. He had prepared what he would say carefully but was caught unawares by his frank show of emotion, and he particularly regretted not having thanked choreographer Ashford and his assistant, "probably the most important people I worked with," because they gave him a complex dance to do and then taught him to do it.

Appearing in "Grey Gardens," Ebersole said, "I feel I'm part of a great work of art." She laughed about having recently been told she was over the hill: "It's so encouraging to be over the hill in the role of a lifetime!"

As she was talking, one of her elaborate, multi-diamond earrings broke loose and cascaded down her decolletage. Retrieving it just before it disappeared, she said, "Oh, Harry Winston! I can't lose this; they'll put me in pauper's prison."

On the way down in the elevator, I was next to Ebersole and her diamonds, so I asked how much they were worth. "I forget, $250,000 I think," she said. "$300,000," said an aide. I suggested maybe Winston would let her have them at a discount.

"I'd rather have a new kitchen," she said.

Life goes on, even after winning a Tony Award.