NEW YORK  — Courtney B. Vance has won the first Tony Award of the night, taking the trophy for best featured actor in a play after host Neil Patrick Harris opened the show with a high-octane song boasting this night would be bigger than ever.

Vance, who was previously nominated for Tonys for “Fences” and “Six Degrees of Separation,” won for playing a newspaper editor opposite Tom Hanks in “Lucky Guy.”

Cicely Tyson Wins Tony For Best Actress In A Play For ‘The Trip To Bountiful’

Cicely Tyson

NEW YORK  — Cicely Tyson, who returned to Broadway this season for the first time in 30 years, has taken home the Tony Award for best leading actress in a play.

In Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” Tyson plays a widow in 1953 whose only desire is to revisit her old home in Bountiful and recapture purpose she lost when she left for Houston.

Tyson, 88, beat out Laurie Metcalf, Amy Morton, Kristine Nielsen and Holland Taylor.