The stars went hard at Tony Awards 2022 after-parties

An annual tradition returned to New York Monday morning: the bleary sight of hundreds of gown-wearing and tuxedo-clad chorus kids desperately vying for cabs after late-night Tony Awards parties.

Eyes red, heels broken, sequins … everywhere. Gripes about Uber surge charges. A Tony in one hand, a McDonald’s bag in the other.

After last year’s pandemic-hobbled celebrations — following the unusual autumn awards ceremony, Best Play winner “The Inheritance” had a last-second fête at Hurley’s Saloon, and Josh Groban and Aaron Tveit ate Trader Joe’s mini hot dogs in William Ivey Long’s costume studio — big bustling bashes were back in full force.

Champagne was being poured all over town — toasting victories and drowning sorrows.

Best Play victor “The Lehman Trilogy” took over the upstairs of the Bowery Hotel, and Best Musical “A Strange Loop” was at the sexy Edition on 47th Street. The night’s big loser, “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, was on the new roof venue of the old Edison, a block away.

I stopped by a few soirees (just who everyone wants at their feel-good party — a critic!) to watch Broadway let loose. 

Midnight: Tonys parties can go south fast if the show doesn’t win. In 2017 at the Redeye Grill shindig for “Come From Away,” which lost to “Dear Evan Hansen,” I learned just how sad Canadians can get. But my first stop this year, the event for “Six: The Musical” at Guastavino’s on East 59th Street, felt like a winner with a hopping dance floor.     

Still, celebs stayed west. The biggest stars at the “Six” party were the show’s Tony-winning writers, Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow, and the cast of singin’ queens. Upstairs, the venue looked like a wedding. Downstairs, with mysterious young people gathered around tables quietly eating sliders, a college graduation.

1 a.m.: If you had confidently walked up to Tavern on the Green in formalwear, you could’ve strutted right in and partied with the cast of “MJ: The Musical.” Nobody asked for my name, or looked at the PCR test result I was clutching like a passport. A shame: I was 100% ready to say “It’s me — Blanket!”   

The late Michael Jackson’s youngest child wasn’t there. But his two other kids, Paris and Prince, were and, despite their show losing Best Musical to “A Strange Loop,” both were happy and chatty. 

So were Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, “I May Destroy You” star and creator Michaela Coel and Lena Waithe.

3 a.m.: My final schlep was to the new Broadway-themed Civilian Hotel on 48th Street. Everything else had ended, and the hot spot turned into a net for the night owls. The invite list was officially for 250 people, but all of Hell’s Kitchen came. 

I congratulated a beaming Matt Doyle on winning Best Supporting Actor for “Company” and nearly smashed my Champagne flute clinking his Tony. When the DJ played Michael Jackson tunes, Best Actor in a Musical winner Myles Frost, who plays the Prince of Pop, gave an impromptu performance in the bar. The 22-year-old can moonwalk on command. Supporting Actor in a Play winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “POTUS” star Lea DeLaria, Garrett Clayton and 2019 Tony nominee Gideon Glick were milling about.

At 4 a.m., the DJ cranked up the lights and played “Last Dance,” and folks were told to vamoose. But some party-hardy producers and publicists poured into a suite on the fourth floor and went till the sun came up. Who needs the Vanity Fair Oscars party when you can eat flatbread pizza on the ground of a Midtown hotel room on Tonys night?