Spamalot's Knights Take Tony Awards By Storm

Killer rabbits, flatulent Frenchmen, giant knights who say "Ni!" - it is the kind of daft British humour one would not expect to storm New York.

But Spamalot, the musical based loosely on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, has romped home with the most prestigious prizes in this year's Tony awards, the Oscars of Broadway, including that of best musical.

Mike Nichols (The Graduate and, more recently, Closer) was named best director. It is his sixth Tony, and he was almost sheepish as he accepted the award: "I guess you're thinking, 'Age before beauty,'" he said. "Me too." Actor Sara Ramirez won best featured actress in a musical as the Lady of the Lake.

Spamalot, which has a book and lyrics by the Python Eric Idle, and stars Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce (aka Niles in Frasier), has also been a huge commercial success, taking $27m (£14.8m) in advance sales. Producers are apparently eyeing West End venues.

Though other Pythons have been less than complimentary (Terry Jones described it as "utterly pointless"), the influential New York Times critic Ben Brantley, with only a touch of grudgingness, called it an "eager celebration of inanity".

The show mingles restagings of the 1975 film's favourite set pieces with knowing spoofs of Broadway tropes and references to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. At one point Hyde Pierce performs a song about the importance of including Jews in any Broadway show.

The musical has also been tempting in a traditionally unwilling demographic: men, especially in their 20s, 30s and early 40s. Broadway's audience across the board is aging, and about two-thirds female.

The Light in the Piazza, a 1950s-set musical about the not-very-smooth course of young love staged at the Lincoln Center, took six prizes, notably best actress in a musical for Victoria Clark.

With four wins including best play and best direction of a play, was Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's drama about a nun who suspects a priest of abuse. Shanley is best known as a screenwriter, notably for the Cher vehicle, Moonstruck.

But in terms of plays, it was a bad night for Brits. Only a few months ago, New Yorkers were noting the "invasion" by UK directors, from David Leveaux, Anthony Page and Edward Hall to the (London-based Irishman) John Crowley and the (Australian-born, adoptive Brit) Michael Blakemore.

Though Crowley's production of Martin McDonagh's play The Pillowman, starring Jeff Goldblum, took two awards for its design, nominations for best director and best play failed to convert into awards.

Blakemore's production of Michael Frayn's Democracy won a best play nomination. But the drama, which had been such a hit at the National Theatre and in the West End, flopped badly in New York, let down by its cast, say some.

Those British directors who had essayed the great American classics came off even worse. Leveaux's production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie was conspicuous by its absence in the awards, as was Edward Hall's "wide-eyed English tourist's" version, as a New York Times writer put it, of A Streetcar Named Desire.

But Anthony Page's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf picked up best actor award for Bill Irwin, while the play's author, Edward Albee, won the lifetime achievement award.

Nor was it a night for film stars. Denzel Washington's Julius Caesar was left out in the cold, and Jessica Lange, Christian Slater, Natasha Richardson and Edie Falco all failed to impress nominators.

Billy Crystal was a notable exception, taking the special theatrical event award with his one-man show 700 Sundays.

Broadway's best

Best play: Doubt

Best musical: Monty Python's Spamalot

Best book of a musical: Rachel Sheinkin: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Best original score (music and/or lyrics): Adam Guettel - The Light in the Piazza

Best revival of a play: Glengarry Glen Ross

Best revival of a musical: - La Cage aux Folles

Special theatrical event: Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays

Leading actor in a play: Bill Irwin - Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Leading actress in a play: Cherry Jones - Doubt

Leading actor in a musical: Norbert Leo Butz - Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Leading actress in a musical: Victoria Clark - The Light in the Piazza

Best direction of a play: Doug Hughes - Doubt

Best direction of a musical: Mike Nichols - Spamalot

Best choreography: Jerry Mitchell - La Cage aux Folles

Lifetime achievement in the theatre: Edward Albee