THE TONY AWARDS

Sunday’s 63rd annual Tony Awards were expected to be a love fest for plays, musicals and performers hailing from other countries, and the prime-time telecast of the major awards for the year’s Broadway productions was virtually devoid of surprises.

“Billy Elliot: The Musical,” the adaptation of the film in which a young boy pursues his dream to dance against a backdrop of mid-1980s economic hardship in Northern England, led the onslaught with 10 Tony Awards.

Only a musical revival award for “Hair” prevented an eclipse of American-created shows in the four best-production categories -- and there were no foreign contenders in the musical revival category.

Overall, shows written by Americans reaped just 10 of the 28 gold Tony medallions bestowed.

“It’s so wonderful that Brits and Americans can work together. [Broadway] is such a wonderful place to be,” Gregory Clarke, sound designer for “Equus,” said as he accepted his Tony during the “creative categories” segment that preceded the three-hour CBS telecast from Radio City Music Hall. By the time the broadcast began, productions originating in Great Britain led the Americans, nine to four, including an unusual tie for orchestration between “Billy Elliot” and “Next to Normal.”

“What you’re seeing is essentially a sweep for ‘Billy Elliot,’ nothing more than that,” said producer Jordan Roth of Jujamcyn Theaters. However, even without the night’s big winner, shows created by European writers accounted for eight of the remaining 18 Tonys and for six of the 14 shows that produced winners.

“Maybe you missed my accent, you wanted to hear it again,” said Yasmina Reza, the French playwright who won the best-play Tony for “God of Carnage,” in her acceptance speech. She won in 1998 for “Art.”

Among the three awards for “God of Carnage” was Marcia Gay Harden’s actress Tony as the mother of a beaten-up 11-year-old who explodes during a confrontation with the bully’s parents. “I tell my children . . . that tantrums and tears will get them nowhere. I don’t know how to explain this,” she said as she accepted her award.

She also teasingly thanked her husband “for preparing me for this role” in “a play about marital strife.”

“Carnage” director Matthew Warchus also won.

Except for Angela Lansbury, Sunday’s acting honorees were first-time Tony winners -- the freshest-faced among them David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish, the boys who alternate performances as the aspiring ballet dancer in “Billy Elliot” who wins over his scornful, economically pressed family of coal miners in his pursuit of a life as a dancer. The three shared the award for actor in a musical.

“Next to Normal” won three Tonys, including a rare triumph over “Billy Elliot,” with co-creators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, who began working together in college productions at Columbia University, won for best score over Elton John.

Alice Ripley won for actress in a musical, playing the wife and mother in “Next to Normal” whose family suffers piteously along with her as she undergoes treatment for bipolar disorder, depression and delusions.

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” a revival of the August Wilson drama, was the only other multiple winner, with two, including featured actor for Roger Robinson as the wise folk healer, Bynum.

Australian actor Geoffrey Rush added an actor Tony to his Academy Award for “Shine” (1996) and his Emmy for “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” (2005). Rush won for his turn as a comically doomed, 400-year-old monarch in Eugene Ionesco’s 1960s French-absurdist play “Exit the King.”

“I want to thank Manhattan audiences for proving that French existentialist-absurdist tragicomedy rocks,” he said, then proudly noted the production’s Melbourne origins.

Lansbury, a native Londoner and longtime U.S. resident much beloved by American audiences, won her fifth Tony -- and her first in 30 years -- playing Madame Arcati, the ghost-conjuring medium in that quintessentially English comedy, Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

“Who knew, who knew that at this time in my life I should be presented with this lovely, lovely award,” said the 83-year-old, now tied with Julie Harris for the most Tonys by an actor or actress. Being among “you Broadwayites is the greatest gift I can imagine in my old age,” she added. “Thank you for having me back.”

Close on their heels is Liza Minnelli, who won her fourth Tony -- for special theatrical event in her showcase, “Liza’s at The Palace.”

Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy, “The Norman Conquests,” won for revival of a play.

In opting for “Carnage,” Tony voters declined to honor one of America’s most admired playwrights, Horton Foote, with a posthumous award for his Texas comedy, “Dividing the Estate.” Foote died in March at 92.

Michael Ritchie, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group, was unconcerned with the foreign-domestic breakdown of the award winners. “I didn’t even notice,” Ritchie said. “Bottom line, I learned this a long time ago: As long as it gets people into the theater it helps all of us.”

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5: The Musical,” which had its world premiere at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre, went home empty-handed, as did “Rock of Ages,” the hair-metal jukebox musical that also originated in L.A.

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mike.boehm@latimes.com