Once wins eight Tony Awards 2012: a British triumph that we've yet to see To see, or not to see... I was faced with the agonising choice on a flying visit to New York recently between catching the hotly tipped musical Once (at Jacobs Theatre) or Mike Nichols's kill-for-a-ticket revival of Death of a Salesman (at Ethel Barrymore Theatre). I wavered, then plumped for the Miller. Now I don't regret that decision for an instant - for me, a play that had shrunk to the status of an overstated, school text-book "classic" was revealed, thanks to spot-on direction and superlative acting across the ensemble, in the magnificent and richly textured colours of a gut-wrenching masterpiece. Yet as I wake up to find that "Salesman" has garnered a mere two Tonies - Best Revival, Best Direction - besides the astounding eight gongs handed out for Once part of me inevitably wishes I'd managed to extend my stay so I could lay claim to knowing what all that particular fuss is about. What's clear is that it's being notched up as an Irish and British triumph. Enda Walsh, a writer who can often be far too densely wordy for his own good, seems to have found a vital, simple vehicle for his undeniable talents in this adaptation of the low-budget 2006 film about two young songwriters (Guy - Irish and Girl - Czech) who make sweet music in Dublin. Director John Tiffany's name has become a byword for excellence through his prodigious output for the National Theatre of Scotland, most significantly Black Watch (which was as much a wow in New York as it was elsewhere in the world). And choreographer Steven Hoggett, instrumental in Black Watch's physical potency, has evidently risen further up the ranks of those with creative clout with his work here - the New York Times critic raved: ""Once" uses song and dance in a way I've never experienced in an American musical (even if its sound will be familiar to alternative radio listeners): to convey a beautiful shimmer of might-have-been regret." It's safe to say that on the back of this remarkable success Once (with music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova; based on the film by John Carney) has the potential to stay there, come here, and maybe even go everywhere - for a long time to come. Aside from the welcome win for Best Play for Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park - already seen and enjoyed by audiences at the Royal Court and in the West End but surely more potent still, in its razor-sharp examination of racial prejudice in the age of political correctness, in the US, what stands out among the winners for someone on this side of the pond is of course the James Corden phenomenon. With, perversely, no Olivier Awards in the bank and only newly arrived in town on Broadway One Man, Two Guv'nors hardly looked like an obvious contender to do much more than over-leap the usual barriers to Anglo-American mutual comprehension. And yet Richard Bean's 60s-rewrite of Goldoni's farce not only seems to have landed straight in the lap of public and critical affection but catapulted James Corden to instant stellar status in the Big Apple. His warm-hearted, larger-than-life presence as Francis Henshall, the put-upon servant to two masters, has gone down a storm and made him the must-see man of the moment. It's invidious, as he himself pointed out in his acceptance speech, to weigh his high-farce turn against the Best Actor award favourite Philip Seymour Hoffman's tragic tour-de-force as Willy Loman. Yet having seen both performances, what's undeniable is that Corden's performance gives one the electrifying sense of a younger talent hitting its stride while also hitting the right note of escapist laughter at just the right time in the depressed economic cycle. Where Loman has come back into timely focus as the casualty of the capitalist dream, Corden swaggers into view as something like a salvation against Depression. The only hope is that he doesn't get snaffled by the American talent-scouts and leave us high and dry without a quintessential funny-man just when we too need him back here most.