Utopian win for Jennifer Ehle and Tom Stoppard at Tony Awards

The nine-hour epic dominated the night, winning a total of seven gongs.

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The trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals was named best play and came second only to the new American rock musical Spring Awakening, which captured a record eight Tonys.

The previous record was six, held by Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman and Alan Bennett's The History Boys.

Stoppard said: "I would be more than happy to have equalled the playwright of Death of a Salesman and a contemporary of mine, Alan Bennett."

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The play also saw awards for director Jack O'Brien and two of the featured players in its large cast — Ehle and Billy Crudup.

Utopia swept the technical awards for a play, winning prizes for sets, costumes and lighting.

The award was Stoppard's fourth triumph in the Tonys.

He previously won for Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (1968), Travesties (1976) and The Real Thing (1984).

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Stoppard, 69, said: "I feel nostalgic because it's 40 years since I first came here with a play, and I'm sentimental enough to want to start by thanking the New York theatre for having me, for good times and good friends. It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10 per cent of the gross."

He paid tribute to director Jack O'Brien. "Jack has directed me three times of the four times I've been at the Lincoln Centre. I want to say You can't imagine what I owe him' but if you've seen the Coast Of Utopia, you can imagine what I owe him. Thank you Jack, thanks a lot."

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Producer Andre Bishop said: "We want to thank the great Tom Stoppard for writing a wonderful, wonderful play and the magnificent Jack O'Brien for directing it so beautifully."

Ehle, 37, best known for her role in the BBC's Pride & Prejudice, said as she collected her award: "Thank you ... for having the courage to do the Coast Of Utopia."

Spring Awakening is about the sexual longing of 19th-century German teenagers.

Producer Ira Pittelman said: "Steven Sater, Duncan Sheik and Michael Mayer, we thank you for conceiving and creating a Broadway musical that rocks, that makes you laugh, and cry and think. A show that speaks from the heart and touches audiences of every age and every generation."

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Elsewhere at the 61st annual Tonys ceremony, the three British nominees for best director - Donmar Warehouse artistic director Michael Grandage for Frost/Nixon, David Grindley for Journey's End and Melly Still for the National Theatre production of Coram Boy - left the Radio City Music Hall empty handed.

There was also disappointment for Britons up for best leading actress in a play - Eve Best for the Old Vic production of A Moon For The Misbegotten, Vanessa Redgrave for The Year Of Magical Thinking, and Londonborn Angela Lansbury for her performance as a tennis legend in Terrence McNally's Deuce.

It was won by Julie White for The Little Dog Laughed.

Journey's End, a classic British play about the trenches, won for best revival of a play hours after closing.

The show drew rave reviews but failed to attract large enough audiences.