Every year, as the awards push begins, we look back over the season that was. Somehow it has all gone so quickly! In the 2025-26 offerings, Broadway has seen its version of shrinkflation: fewer new musicals, less turnover, a robust group of revivals trying to balance a rather anemic list of new work. But while mulling over my “who should win” preferences, I suddenly find that there’s still too much to choose from.
The Tony nominators have done their work — now the Tony voters must do theirs. My predictions for the way the voters will go are marked with a ✓; my own personal favorites are marked with a ★. Look at this embarrassment of riches! I’m overwhelmed at remembering it all.
Best Play
“The Balusters”
✓ “Giant”
★ “Liberation”
“Little Bear Ridge Road”
All four nominated plays boil down to the question of whether change through conversation is still possible in the face of social atomization, but Mark Rosenblatt’s Olivier Award-winning “Giant” is the most topical and direct — and thus, I think, most likely to be awarded — expression of that puzzle. For me, though, Bess Wohl’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Liberation” executed the task at the highest level of difficulty. She choreographed a complex conversation for a half-dozen women, while also braiding in both a personal reckoning and a fourth-wall-breaking invitation to the audience. It felt messy and profound; it also felt like progress.
Best Musical
✓ “The Lost Boys”
★ “Schmigadoon!”
“Titaníque”
“Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
Tony voters will probably reward either “The Lost Boys,” a vampire spectacle that revives the deep-pocketed swagger of yesteryear’s Broadway, or “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” which has managed to win hearts without pre-existing I.P. or a huge budget. What might tip the balance: “The Lost Boys,” in certain ways reminiscent of “The Outsiders,” will rally anyone who wants to believe in Broadway itself. It’s fun! The flying is transcendent! But when I think about the sheer old-fashioned ebullience of Cinco Paul’s “Schmigadoon!” — its compositional invention and depth of talent — I find myself hoping the voters will give it the laurel.
Best Revival of a Play
“Becky Shaw”
✓ ★ “Death of a Salesman”
“Every Brilliant Thing”
“Fallen Angels”
“Oedipus”
Going up against this revival of “Death of a Salesman” is, in many ways, a sucker bet. It’s the most famous American play being given the superluxe treatment: a superb cast working in impressive synchrony and a physical environment sculpted by the opera-house darling Chloe Lamford, lit exquisitely by another London import, Jack Knowles. It’s possible that lingering industry concerns about the production’s producer, Scott Rudin, who spent some time in the wilderness of public opinion over bullying behavior, might prevent some folks from voting for it, but even with several clever and even brilliant pieces in competition, this juggernaut will — and should — roll over its competition.
Best Revival of a Musical
★ “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
✓ “Ragtime”
“The Rocky Horror Show”
“Ragtime” is the rare Broadway show to address the grave national moment; voters will surely want to lift up its seriousness of purpose, its lush treatment of the Ahrens and Flaherty score, not to mention its excellent performances. If it were up to me, though, I’d send “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” to the Heaviside Layer. Every now and then a revival overhauls our understanding of an artwork, and this refashioning of the Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical is one of these instances. It’s a “revival” in a sense that Lazarus himself would recognize: What had died as kitsch breathes again! “Cats” is now, finally, forever.
Best Leading Actor in a Play
Will Harrison, “Punch”
✓ Nathan Lane, “Death of a Salesman”
★ John Lithgow, “Giant”
Daniel Radcliffe, “Every Brilliant Thing”
Mark Strong, “Oedipus”
This race comes down to Lane vs. Lithgow. Nathan Lane’s melancholy will probably take the field: The award often goes to the part as much as the person, and there’s no greater part in the canon than Willy Loman. But I think Lithgow, playing Roald Dahl, is actually mastering the greater challenge. He animates a sometimes thin play with a courageously snaky performance, one that hints at awfulness in Dahl that the text itself doesn’t even touch on. (And it touches on plenty!) Watching his performance is like absorbing a curse: He sticks to your spirit like tar.
Best Leading Actress in a Play
Rose Byrne, “Fallen Angels”
Carrie Coon, “Bug”
Susannah Flood, “Liberation”
✓ Lesley Manville, “Oedipus”
★ Kelli O’Hara, “Fallen Angels”
I assume the voters will choose the biggest dramatic performance here, which is Lesley Manville’s spectacular turn as the political wife in “Oedipus.” She delivers a monologue near the end of the play that strikes the heart like a cataclysm. Still, I’d rather see Kelli O’Hara’s performance in the romp “Fallen Angels” win for this, her ninth nomination. O’Hara isn’t simply delivering Noël Coward’s frothy text: She’s also writing her own wordless, parallel comedy about drunkenness via a truly stupendous physical performance. There ought to be a Tony just for the way she clings to a banister.
Best Leading Actor in a Musical
Nicholas Christopher, “Chess”
Luke Evans, “The Rocky Horror Show”
✓ ★ Joshua Henry, “Ragtime”
Sam Tutty, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
Brandon Uranowitz, “Ragtime”
This has been Joshua Henry’s Tony since he first strode onstage as Coalhouse Walker Jr. for the New York City Center Gala revival of “Ragtime,” back in 2024, and not even the extraordinary emotionality of Nicholas Christopher, the wild charisma of Luke Evans, the charm-bomb sweetness of Sam Tutty and the melancholy gravitas of Brandon Uranowitz can change that. Henry’s matchless baritone and his extraordinary talent for phrasing make sense of the greatest part of the Ahrens and Flaherty musical — its rage, which is too easily frittered away by the musical’s rather sentimental ending. The secret is the way Henry first performs immense gladness before turning all his happiness to gall.
Best Leading Actress in a Musical
Sara Chase, “Schmigadoon!”
Stephanie Hsu, “The Rocky Horror Show”
✓ ★ Caissie Levy, “Ragtime”
Marla Mindelle, “Titaníque”
Christiani Pitts, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
With Lea Michele out of the nominations picture, the path for Caissie Levy seems to be smooth. Christiani Pitts has a powerful voice, but in “Two Strangers” we never get a real sense of her acting instrument; Marla Mindelle’s spoof deserves the Heart of the Ocean diamond, but not the Tony. Sara Chase and Stephanie Hsu give exuberant performances but neither of them gets the material to show off their deeper talents that Levy does. In another singer’s hands, the “Ragtime” protagonist Mother might have turned to mush. Levy, though, threads a strand of steel into Mother, infusing both her own silvery sound and the character’s developing backbone with a show-sustaining strength.
Best Featured Actor in a Play
Christopher Abbott, “Death of a Salesman”
Danny Burstein, “Marjorie Prime”
★ Brandon J. Dirden, “Waiting for Godot”
✓ Alden Ehrenreich, “Becky Shaw”
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”
Richard Thomas, “The Balusters”
Tony voters will no doubt be dazzled by the recent, wild surprise of Alden Ehrenreich’s Broadway debut in “Becky Shaw,” in which he plays an acerbic antihero with hidden depths of need. Nonetheless, I would give the Tony to Brandon J. Dirden, whose wicked Pozzo in “Waiting for Godot” is easily the best Pozzo I’ve ever seen. The character gallops through Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, callous to the torment of the underclass, blithe even at the moment he falls into it. Dirden was simultaneously menacing and hilarious, drawling his commands like an evil Foghorn Leghorn, if the Looney Tunes rooster were caught — ah say, ah say! — in an existential nightmare.
Best Featured Actress in a Play
Betsy Aidem, “Liberation”
★ Marylouise Burke, “The Balusters”
Aya Cash, “Giant”
✓ Laurie Metcalf, “Death of a Salesman”
June Squibb, “Marjorie Prime”
Laurie Metcalf is a generational talent, capable of creating a mood onstage particular to herself: So, would you say that she’s the “featured” role in “Death of a Salesman”? Other Lindas might be but never Metcalf — Joe Mantello’s revival rests squarely on her. To reward an actually “featured” part, you’d need to turn to someone like the marvelous Marylouise Burke, whose zingy comic asides in “The Balusters” come as such a marvelous surprise each time. The play couldn’t work without her, yet she’s not its leading voice — if you’re going to be a stickler for category (I guess I’m starting now?), Burke’s the right one for this award.
Best Featured Actor in a Musical
★ Ali Louis Bourzgui, “The Lost Boys”
✓ André De Shields, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
Bryce Pinkham, “Chess”
Ben Levi Ross, “Ragtime”
Layton Williams, “Titaníque”
Voters will almost certainly give André De Shields a Tony for playing Old Deuteronomy. Other Jellicles compete for trophies or a place in cat heaven, but he is the prize. In essence, though, De Shields is playing himself, gracing us with the same majestic charisma he carries into every room. When it comes to the most extraordinary piece of performance in this category, I would choose Ali Louis Bourzgui, the lostest of all the vampires in “The Lost Boys.” He plays the immortal David as if he’s Rimbaud in leather — “arisen from violet vapor” like the bad boy poet, doomed to ruin his and everybody’s hearts.
Best Featured Actress in a Musical
✓ Shoshana Bean, “The Lost Boys”
Hannah Cruz, “Chess”
Rachel Dratch, “The Rocky Horror Show”
★ Ana Gasteyer, “Schmigadoon!”
Nichelle Lewis, “Ragtime”
In the middle of “The Lost Boys,” the single mom played by Shoshana Bean sings “Wild,” a hymn to a lost, pre-motherhood youth that Bean fills with yearning and a strangely joyful pain. You can practically see someone throwing her a Tony from the wings. I, though, would be happy if Ana Gasteyer’s “Schmigadoon!” villainess manages to intercept that toss. Her motormouth patter song “Tribulation” is basically “Ya Got Trouble” from “The Music Man” but tailored to Gasteyer’s gifts. It bowled me over, and it was the talk of the sidewalk afterward; it felt as though we’d all witnessed the arrival of a new musical comedy juggernaut.
Best Direction of a Play
Nicholas Hytner, “Giant”
★ Robert Icke, “Oedipus”
Kenny Leon, “The Balusters”
✓ Joe Mantello, “Death of a Salesman”
Whitney White, “Liberation”
If a play is going to sweep, it’ll be “Death of a Salesman”: Joe Mantello deserves kudos for how he’s integrated the designers’ eerie atmosphere into the performances themselves. But I’m still curious about how Robert Icke managed to make such a disparate group of moods in “Oedipus” function together — the gallows humor, the icy breath of doom, the weird horniness. There’s also no more virtuosic directorial touch than the set’s onstage clock, which counts down to the tragedy’s final revelation. Our excitement mounts as the seconds tick past, and thus we grow increasingly aware of our hunger for other people’s suffering.
Best Direction of a Musical
✓ Michael Arden, “The Lost Boys”
Lear deBessonet, “Ragtime”
Christopher Gattelli, “Schmigadoon!”
Tim Jackson, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
★ Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
Tony voters will no doubt notice that the most directing, the biggest and most impressive directing, is happening at “The Lost Boys,” which Michael Arden has elevated from a lopsided book with middling music to an operatic experience. But I think we should hand the hardware to Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, because they’ve created a more profoundly integrated artwork. Every part of “The Jellicle Ball” speaks to every other part — about beauty, about age, about refuge. The job of the director doesn’t usually include the creation of a sacred space, but Levingston and Rauch have met even that impossibly high bar.
Best Book of a Musical
David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, “The Lost Boys”
✓ Cinco Paul, “Schmigadoon!”
Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue, “Titaníque”
★ Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
When it comes to the category of musical “book,” I assume that Tony types will warm to “Schmigadoon!” for its many tart comments on the ridiculousness of the musicals we already know and love — plot gags and tart asides that call out the likes of “The Sound of Music” or “Carousel” for their already forgiven sins. Everyone loves an in-joke, right? But I would hope there will be at least some love for the scrappy little two-hander “Two Strangers,” which somehow manages to scamper across two and a half hours while never wearing out its welcome. The book category would be a good place to reward this tiny show’s innovation and spirit.
Best Original Score
Caroline Shaw, “Death of a Salesman”
Steve Bargonetti, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”
The Rescues, “The Lost Boys”
★ Cinco Paul, “Schmigadoon!”
✓ Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”
In the score competition, I would wager that Tony voters will choose Jim Barne and Kit Buchan out of a fondness for originality. Cinco Paul, on the other hand, has ruffled a feather or two: Because he’s adapting his own television show of the same name, there was a late-in-the-game eligibility question about whether he had included sufficient new material that his score would qualify as “written for the theater.” (He had.) For my money, his rambunctious musical is peak pastiche, containing songs that seem to have been around forever but are actually complex and new. It’s been a thin year for new musicals, but Paul’s witty and affectionate score reminds us of the form at its best.
Best Choreography
✓ Christopher Gattelli, “Schmigadoon!”
Ellenore Scott, “Ragtime”
Ani Taj, “The Rocky Horror Show”
★ Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball”
Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, “The Lost Boys”
It’s easy to be hypnotized by the clever dances of Christopher Gattelli in “Schmigadoon!,” especially when the wonderful Max Clayton starts leaping and bounding and assemblé-ing while seducing his beloved. As for me, I’m still hanging on to my sense of wonder at Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons’s work in “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” The pair takes a cast that’s half Broadway babies, half ballroom kittens, and then herds them into an ensemble that seems as though it’s always worked together. Individual showmanship melts into rare moments of group performance, and every time it does, the roof blows off.
Helen Shaw is the chief theater critic for The Times.
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