War Horse is first past the post at the Tony Awards

Broadway may not be “just for gays any more”, as the event's unstoppably charming and funny compere Neil Patrick Harris noted in his song-and-dance opening to the 2011 Tony Awards, held last night in New York to honour that city's theatre season just gone. But it’s still very much about the Brits: some habits never die.

The truism was borne out yet again at a ceremony that saw Mark Rylance pick up an additional Tony and the National Theatre’s War Horse win in every category (five) in which it was nominated, including Best Play and Best Director for Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris. For weeks, the Lincoln Center Theatre version of Nick Stafford’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s source novel had battled a backlash within both the industry and the press that, in actual literary terms, it was in fact the least deserving of the four Best Play nominees. (I would agree.)

But though many were predicting an upset victory by Stephen Adly Guirgis’s fiery (and, in New York, unprintable) The Motherfucker With the Hat, in the end the appeal of the Handspring Puppet Company and some startling stagecraft carried the day, though author Stafford himself must doubtless be a tad surprised at having wrested so high profile a trophy from, say, the likes of Jez Butterworth. As for the Guirgis play, nominated for six Tonys and winner of none, what can one say besides, well, it was f***ed. Or as the American press might put it: ____ ed.

Butterworth's epic Jerusalem nabbed leading man Rylance his second Tony in three years, thereby allowing the protean actor another chance to deliver not the usual litany of thanks but, instead, to quote at length from Minnesota poet Louis Jenkins: all without referencing any of his collaborators on the play or fellow nominees: take that, Al Pacino! Um, why so gnomic an approach? “I feel kind of sad when I win things,” Rylance was quoted as saying in the press room following his victory, which tends to beg the question as to whether acknowledging his colleagues might not make them happy.

Brits who came away empty-handed included Vanessa Redgrave (Driving Miss Daisy), Adam Godley (Anything Goes) and Joanna Lumley (a surprise nominee for La Bête), the Tony ceremony otherwise largely given over to The Book of Mormon: the musical from the creators of South Park and the recipient of nine trophies, is due in London next year. (Ever quick on the uptake, the New York producers responded to its inevitable near-sweep by raising ticket prices before the Tonys had even happened – this time to $155, though premium seats go for more than twice that.)

The Mormon/War Horse juggernaut didn’t eclipse all comers. The season’s dark-horse late entry, a revival of Larry Kramer’s AIDS-themed play The Normal Heart, picked up three awards, including one for Featured Actress Ellen Barkin, making her Broadway debut (and a mightily impassioned acceptance speech, as well). And there were deserved cheers for the brilliant Norbert Leo Butz, who took Best Actor in a Musical for inheriting Tom Hanks’s screen role in the hugely undervalued stage-musical version of Catch Me If You Can; if there’s one player on Broadway at the moment who should be seen in London, it is Butz.

Ineligible but unlikely to be ignored, the most talked-about show of the year, Spider-Man, was much in evidence, not least in a scintillating spot in which Tony host Harris tried to see how many Spidey jokes he could cram into 30 seconds. Whether the last laugh turns out to be on him, and Broadway in general, will soon become clear when the show finally opens officially – after nearly eight months of previews (!) – tomorrow night.

• A full list of winners on the Tony Awards website