NEW YORK (AP) — If you weren’t watching the Tonys too carefully, you would have thought they had turned into the Oscars.

Sunday’s show was a night for celebrities and for the meaning of celebrity, when Academy Award winners Denzel Washington and Catherine Zeta-Jones took home their first Tonys, and when the most honoured play, Red, was itself a meditation on art and commerce. Other familiar faces included Will Smith and Michael Douglas, Helen Mirren and Daniel Radcliffe, and Glee stars Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele.

The line on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was that he gave her class and she gave him sex. So has been the dance of Broadway and Hollywood. Celebrities from Sean Combs to Julia Roberts have turned to Broadway when in search of serious work, while Broadway has welcomed the famous to ensure financial backing and boost the box office, especially when for many the recession makes high-priced theatre tickets an unreachable luxury.

Stars not only have appeared onstage over the years, but behind the scenes as well, with entertainers such as Sean Connery (Art) and Jay-Z (Fela!) producing.

And even sports got into the act Sunday night, with New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez stepping out on stage at Radio City Music Hall.

Red, which won the Tony for best play and five other honours, loomed as the dark, unanswered conscience at the bright lights ceremony, an anguished two-man drama about painter Mark Rothko and his devilish dilemma over whether to accept a rich commission for the fancy Four Seasons restaurant. Rothko couldn’t go through with it; the Tonys themselves were an ode to temptation.

The awards show was skewed in a musical direction: Its business was clearly show business.

“Welcome to the Tonys,” said host Sean Hayes when it began — “the World Cup of show tunes.”

He wasn’t kidding.

A 13-minute opening number included segments from Promises, Promises; Come Fly With Me and other musicals, then finished in explosive style with punk rockers Green Day.

The broadcast was packed with musical performances from nominated shows, including Memphis, the rhythm ‘n’ blues musical set in the American South in the 1950s, which won four Tonys, including best musical.

Even the hit TV series Glee got on the bandwagon. Morrison did a full-scale rendition of All I Need Is the Girl, from Gypsy, followed by Michele belting out a Streisand-esque version of Don’t Rain on My Parade, from Funny Girl. Zeta-Jones was a show herself, winning for best actress in a musical as the amorous actress in the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and earlier crooning the Sondheim standard Send in the Clowns. Sex was worked right into her acceptance speech. She thanked many, including her husband, fellow actor and Oscar winner Michael Douglas, whom she “gets to sleep with every night”.