2012 Tonys - Carrie Dunn's Live Britsnark Blog!

4:06 AM - Well, that was another stunning evening of entertainment - slick show as usual, and some great performances. And Hugh Jackman! What more could you want? Thanks for your company this evening. I'm off to sleep. See you next year!

4:05 AM - NPH returns to wrap it all up, with an ironic joke song about what he'd sing if the show hadn't overrun.

4:02 AM - And they hand it on to Once.

4:01 AM - Trey Parker and Matt Stone are finally here to hand over the baton for Best Musical.

3:58 AM - Oh goodness, another ad break, and they haven't even presented Best Musical yet. Seriously, Tony Awards! It's nearly four in the morning! It's a school night!

3:56 AM - Audra McDonald wins Best Actress in a Musical, to the surprise of literally nobody. She blubs her way through a very actressy acceptance speech, about the theatre being her home, and is very gracious and lovely. Bless her.

3:52 AM - Best Leading Actress in a Play goes to Nina Arianda. She reveals a little too much about herself as she tells Plummer he was her first crush, and she enjoyed it when he blew that whistle in The Sound of Music. Amazing.

3:47 AM - After the final ad break of the evening, Christopher Plummer (CAPTAIN VON TRAPP!) will be the next guest presenter. This pleases me.

3:44 AM - How many religious-themed musicals does Broadway really need? Or for that matter the Tony Awards? Well, Leap of Faith, after its short and truncated run, has returned for the evening.

3:39 AM - Oh, you'd think I'd be pleased for James Corden winning Best Actor in a Play, but it just seems so wrong for him to win ahead of these amazing actors. Better than Philip Seymour Hoffman? Corden does at least admit that it's slightly out of left field, even for him.

3:37 AM - Steve Kazee wins Best Actor in a Musical as I go past the barrier of "tired". He's very emotional and he talks about the death of his mother and how his castmates have supported him through that. This is a very sad Tony Awards.

3:35 AM - OK, shedding a quiet tear here as Hugh tells his wife, "I know how much you hate public speaking. This is the greatest thing you've ever done for me."

3:33 AM - "She's never kept a secret her entire life!" he exclaims - apparently she told him she was going to the loo.

3:31 AM - Hang on, Hugh Jackman's wife has just come on to the stage - he looks MORTIFIED - and she's presenting the special Tony Award to him. God bless both of them. Adorable.

3:24 AM - Did I imagine it, or was a girl just crowd-surfing back to her seat behind NPH?

3:20 AM - Hahahaha, they're being played off because their acceptance speech is so intensely expansive and ridiculously massive, and Harvey Fierstein needs to introduce the boat cast of Hairspray.

3:17 AM - Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone are here to present Best Revival of a Musical (to Porgy and Bess), but mostly to sing and do a bit and generally be fabulous.

3:15 AM - Fascinated to see this production of Godspell. I'm oddly fond of it as a show but I've never seen a version that really works all the way through! This lot are wandering into the audience to perform, and terrifying the hell out of everyone there.

3:12 AM - That was a really odd performance from the cast of Evita. Elena Roger sang a whole line, and then Ricky Martin sang And The Money Kept Rolling In VERY, VERY SLOWLY.

3:05 AM - I love that this version of Evita is being billed as authentically Latin; I think it's because Elena Roger is Argentinian.

3:02 AM - Clybourne Park wins!

2:57 AM - Jim Parsons, yay! He's presenting Best Play in a seriously theatrical way. No messing up autocue for HIM.

2:52 AM - More ad breaks. No consideration for those of us who have to be up in four hours. 

2:44 AM - Best Revival of a Play goes to Death of a Salesman. And then it's Josh Groban! God love him. He was the best thing about the odd Chess in Concert we had at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago.

2:39 AM - The Rock of Ages film looks awful. AWFUL.

2:34 AM - It's BeBe Winans, of guesting on Eternal's I Wanna Be The Only One fame! He finally introduces P&B.

2:30 AM - And that leads to Sheryl Crow presenting the award itself to Alan Menken and Jack Feldman, both first-time winners for Newsies.

2:29 AM - Oh - another NPH performance - honouring all the composers who have won Best Score at the Tonys with a comedy medley.

2:27 AM - I'm flagging now. Let's hope Porgy and Bess can keep me awake.

2:16 AM - Ellen Barkin says she is "thrilled", but sounds singularly underwhelmed. Still, she introduces the segments from the nominated Best Plays.

2:14 AM - Ooh, Judy Kaye wins, for Best Featured Actress etc etc. She makes a gag about chandeliers being good to her, as her previous Tony win was as Carlotta in Phantom. And then her bubbly speech suddenly takes a very sad turn as she dedicates her win to her father, who died last week.

2:07 AM - I'm excited about James Marsden presenting Best Featured Actress in a Musical. I love the Marsden. He made the last few series of Ally McBeal worth watching (on fast-forward).

2:00 AM - Jessica Chastain seems confused, leading me to think the autocue may be broken, but then she gets it together to present Best Featured Actor in a Play to Christian Borle.

1:59 AM - Angela Lansbury should be on everything ever.

1:57 AM - Time for some Spider-Man jokes, yes? While NPH does his little routine, Angela Lansbury is straight-faced and amazing as ever.

1:49 AM - Excited about this too - the Superstar revival! This doesn't have a Spice Girl, though, I understand?

1:43 AM - Ooh, and then John Tiffany wins Best Direction of a Musical for Once! And Mike Nichols wins Best Direction of a Play for Death of a Salesman (no, I refuse to give it that ridiculous preface) - a record sixth Tony.

1:40 AM - Bit of patriotic pride as Richard Fleeshman joins Caissie Levy for Ghost's showcase performance. It's just as well everyone knows the story of the show, because they're singing such loud counterpoint it could be fairly hard to work out what's going on if you didn't.

1:29 AM - Looking forward to this - the cast of Follies, introduced by Bernadette Peters in a fabulous purple frock.

1:26 AM - Here's presenter Amanda Seyfried, Cosette in the movie of Les Miserables, Sophie in the movie of Mamma Mia!, Karen in Mean Girls and Lilly Kane in Veronica Mars. Basically she rules. Michael McGrath wins Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Nice Work If You Can Get It.

1:25 AM - NB They are pretending that Best Choreography was awarded "moments ago". Instead of an hour ago.

1:20 AM - Heh, they're finally mentioning the creative award winners, an hour after they actually won. I love the Tonys, they're so much better organised than the Oliviers, but they do screw over those pre-show winners every year. Plus they're presenting the other creative awards during the ad breaks!

1:16 AM - OH HEY YOU GUYS IT'S Nick Jonas! No, no snarky comments from me about him. Yet. He introduces the cast of Newsies and their performance.

1:15 AM - I hope they're keeping a tight grasp on the timing again this year, and start playing winners off after a strict 45-second period.

1:12 AM - Paul Rudd presents Best Featured Actress in a Play. I love Paul Rudd. I might go and watch Clueless during the ad breaks. Hang on, they're seriously billing Death of a Salesman as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman? Like Baz Luhrmann did William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?! Judith Light wins and looks like she's about to faint.

1:07 AM - Random NPH musical number, featuring Amanda Seyfried, a seven-second costume change, just for the lols, and Patti LuPone MOWING A LAWN. No, really. 

1:04 AM - He's getting the "gay" jokes in early this year - the 66th Tony Awards, "or as we like to call it, 50 Shades of Gay."

1:03 AM - And the half-dozen tickets still available here in the UK for The Book of Mormon promptly sell out. And here's Neil Patrick Harris!

1:01 AM - Hooray for The Book of Mormon! It swept the boards here last time round, it's opening up this evening, and now it's heading to us next year!

1:00 AM - Here we go!

12:57 AM - In case you too have missed out on the creative awards so far, we've got a rolling list of the winners.

12:54 AM - How do I forget every year how much I love American TV ads? I love your ads for medication in particular, where they list all the horrifying side-effects.

12:38 AM - Yeah, yeah, you guys have fabulous red carpet coverage and a multitude of stars. But you don't have Anneka Rice wandering around enthusing about everything and making jokes about their shared name to Sir Tim, do you? (That's an Olivier Awards in-joke, by the way.)

12:35 AM - So, I've not been over to NYC this season. Which of the musical performances should I MOST be looking forward to, do you reckon?

12:26 AM - Was it something I said? The red carpet coverage seems to have disappeared from the official Tonys site now. Ah well.

12:13 AM - Just having a quick look at the red carpet coverage. Wow, that's NOISY and buzzing!

11:44 PM - Here's Michael's backstage blog - check in with him throughout the evening!

11:15 PM - So during this evening's show, the latest entries from me will be here at the top of the blog, to save you scrolling through pages and pages. Don't forget to check out my colleagues' great coverage of the evening as well - BroadwayGirlNYC is already up and running, and Michael Dale will be covering events live from the media room later on.

11:10 PM - Good evening all! Checking in from the other side of the pond ready for tonight's Tony Awards. It's a late night for me, and frankly I'm not sure I'm going to stay awake right the way through till gone 3am, but let's see how we go - I'm hoping the musical theatre (yes, THEATRE) selections will be enough to keep me going!