Big night for Wilma, Horizon at the Barrymore Awards

It was also a landmark night for local actor James Ijames, who won a best supporting actor award for portraying the young counterman of the Arden's Superior Donuts, then later in the evening received the $10,000 F. Otto Haas Award for an emerging theater artist.

Passage Theatre Company, from Trenton, won the $25,000 Brown Martin Philadelphia Award, given to a theater that encourages building of community, for a production called Love and Communication, about autism.

Nationally known writer-performer Anna Deavere Smith won as best leading actress in a play, for her one-woman Let Me Down Easy, a compelling look at the nation's health-care system through the words of people, both notable and obscure, she had interviewed. The Philadelphia Theatre Company staged it here.

Melinda Chua was named best musical actress, for her title performance in the Walnut's Miss Saigon, and Dan Hodge as best actor in a play, for his role as a bumbling British detective in Delaware Theatre Company's Around the World in 80 Days.

This season's new-play Barrymore went to Michael Hollinger, for his Ghost-Writer at the Arden, where he is tantamount to playwright-in-residence. For outstanding choreography or movement, Waldo Warshaw and Aaron Cromie won for their staging of fights in Theatre Exile's bloody, funny The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Alex Bechtel won for his music direction of a Frank Sinatra tribute called My Way, at the Walnut Street Theatre's Independence Studio.

After the program the audience strolled to a reception a few blocks away at the Benjamin Franklin House ballroom.

Contact staff writer Howard Shapiro at 215-854-5727, hshapiro@phillynews.com, or #philastage on Twitter.