FILE – A view of the stage seems earlier than the beginning of the seventy fifth annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 12, 2022, at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York. (Picture by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK — A pair of singing androids. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning performs. A drunken Mary Todd Lincoln. A musical with a corpse as its hero. Romeo, Juliet, and teddy bears with rave music. To not point out George Clooney.
Broadway has had a stuffed season with seemingly one thing for everybody, and now it’s time to acknowledge the perfect with the Tony Awardshosted by Cynthia Erivo, set for Sunday night time on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Broadway buzz is normally reserved for musicals, however this 12 months the performs — powered by A-list expertise — have pushed the dialog. There’s Clooney in “Good Evening, and Good Luck,” Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Othello,” Sarah Snook in a one-woman model of “The Image of Dorian Grey,” and her “Succession” co-star Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” (Clooney, Snook, and Odenkirk are nominated for Tonys.)
There have been two Pulitzer winners — 2024 awardee “English” and “Objective” from 2025 — however maybe one of many season’s greatest surprises was “Oh, Mary!,” Cole Escola’s irreverent, raunchy, gleefully deranged revisionist historical past centered on Mary Todd Lincoln. All three are nominated for finest play, together with “John Proctor is the Villain” and “The Hills of California.”
On the musical aspect, three choices appear to be within the combine for the highest prize: “Possibly Completely happy Ending,” a rom-com a couple of pair of androids; “Lifeless Outlaw,” about an alcoholic drifter whose embalmed physique turns into a prized possession for half a century; and “Demise Turns into Her,” the musical satire about longtime frenemies who drink a magic potion for everlasting youth and wonder. “Possibly Completely happy Ending,” “Demise Turns into Her,” and one other musical nominee, “Buena Vista Social Membership,” lead nominations with 10 apiece.
The 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion, making it the highest-grossing season ever and signaling that Broadway has lastly emerged from the COVID-19 blues, having overtaken the earlier excessive of $1.8 billion throughout the 2018-2019 season.
“We’re going via this unusual interval, which I’d assume sometime we will draw the road from COVID to this, as you’ll be able to draw the road from the early Nineteen Eighties with AIDS to the explosion of huge musicals once more,” says Harvey Fierstein, who will get a particular Tony for lifetime achievement.
Audra McDonald, essentially the most acknowledged performer within the theater awards’ historical past, might probably lengthen her Tony lead. Already the file holder for many appearing wins with six Tonys, McDonald might add to that because of her main flip in an acclaimed revival of “Gypsy.” She has to get previous Nicole Scherzinger, who has been wowing audiences in “Sundown Blvd.”
Nicole Scherzinger attends the 78th Annual Tony Awards’ Meet the Nominees press occasion on the Sofitel New York on Thursday, Could 8, 2025, in New York. Picture: by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
And Kara Younger — the primary Black feminine actor to be nominated for a Tony Award in 4 consecutive years — might grow to be the primary Black individual to win two Tonys consecutively, ought to she win for her function within the play “Objective.”
Different attainable back-to-back winners embody director Danya Taymor, hoping to comply with up her 2024 win with “The Outsiders” with one other for “John Proctor Is the Villain,” and “Objective” playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who gained final 12 months with “Applicable.”
Different attainable firsts embody Daniel Dae Kim, who might grow to be the primary Asian winner within the class of finest main actor in a play for his work in a revival of “Yellow Face.” And Marjan Neshat and her “English” co-star Tala Ashe might grow to be the primary feminine actors of Iranian descent to win a Tony.
Broadway this season noticed a burst in alt-rock and the emergence of tales of younger individuals for younger individuals, together with “John Proctor is the Villain” and a “Romeo + Juliet” pitched to Technology Z and millennials.
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Sunday’s telecast, as traditional, could have a musical quantity for every of the reveals vying for the perfect new musical crown, in addition to some that didn’t make the lower, like “Simply in Time,” a musical about Bobby Darin, and “Actual Girls Have Curves.” This 12 months, there’s additionally room for “Hamilton,” celebrating its tenth 12 months on Broadway. However the musicals “BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical” and “SMASH” didn’t get slots.
