Playbill On-Line spent Tony night June 1 backstage at Radio City Music Hall, allowing users of this service to chat, live, with winners in 15 of the 21 categories, along with star presenters such as Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters and Lauren Bacall.

Among winners who answered your questions were Best Actress in a Musical Bebe Neuwirth, Best Actress in a Play Janet McTeer, Best Play author Alfred Uhry, Best Score and Book writers Maury Yeston and Peter Stone, Best Choreography designer Ann Reinking, Best Featured Actress in a Musical Lillias White, Best Featured Actress in a Play Lynne Thigpen, Best Revival of a Musical producers Fran and Barry Weissler, among others.

Here are highlights of their online appearances:

* Bernadette Peters and producers Fran and Barry Weissler announced that they are close to a final deal to revive Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway in April 1998 with Peters in the role originated by Ethel Merman.

* Mandy Patinkin announced that he has chosen his next musical project, an adaptation of Captains Courageous, singing the role Manuel this fisherman played on film by Spencer Tracy. Patinkin, who was wearing black goggles after a recent cornea transplant, said he will do a workshop of the musical (previously workshopped at Goodspeed Opera House's Norma Terris Theatre) in New York this fall, with an eye toward a Broadway production in 1998-99. * Though a strange daisy-chain of coincidences, Best Director of a Play Anthony Page was chatting with us when Owen Teale won Best Featured Actor; then while Teale was chatting with us, Janet McTeer won Best Actress; then, just as McTeer was sitting down to chat with us, their play, A Doll's House won Best Revival of a Play. Odder still, they all had the same reaction, in the same accent: "Fahntahstic!"

* More details to come!

-- By Robert Viagas