2025 Tony Award Winners Predictions

Sutton Foster, Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga, Idina Menzel, and (if I’ll invoke her identify) Patti LuPone would have been a monster of an all-star Tony nomination lineup in every other season. However these previous winners, every a significant pressure in musical theater historical past, missed the poll regardless of their (virtually uniformly) robust showings on Broadway this 12 months.

If it’s uncouth to outline a season by who didn’t make the Tony minimize, that group of also-rans is an indication of the riches on supply. And if this season was partially distinguished by the arrival of a cavalcade of Hollywood A-listers, the nominations additionally spotlight what number of Broadway mainstays have arrange residence to ship excellence 12 months after 12 months: Nominees Jonathan Groff, Danya Taymor, Kara Younger, Justin Peck, and Dede Ayite all received Tonys final season.

So if not fairly each gem of the season is within the combine this Sunday (for one, the wonderful As soon as Upon a Mattress didn’t obtain a single nomination), the Tonys will nonetheless supply an opportunity to have a good time a jam-packed 12 months. “The ending’s not crucial half,” sings HelperBot Oliver in Perhaps Completely happy Ending, this season’s greatest shock and delight and the present greatest poised to make a clear sweep. “However as endings go, ours will not be so dangerous.”

Finest Efficiency by a Main Actor in a Play

George Clooney, Good Night time, and Good Luck
Cole Escola, Oh, Mary!
Jon Michael Hill, Goal
Daniel Dae Kim, Yellow Face
Harry Lennix, Goal
Louis McCartney, Stranger Issues: The First Shadow

Nominators did among the preliminary work right here, clearing out most of a cadre of celebrities: Robert Downey Jr., Denzel Washington, and Jake Gyllenhaal had been left off the checklist. So it’s apparently a showdown between George Clooney and Cole Escola. However it’s not likely a lot of a race for the reason that impishly irreverent Escola has change into the darling of Broadway this season, for his or her off-stage madcap interviews as a lot as for his or her on-stage shenanigans. Escola will win, however it’ll be the third case in two years of the Tonys forcing non-binary eventual winners to decide on a binary gender to be able to be thought of.

Finest Efficiency by a Main Actress in a Play

Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California
Mia Farrow, The Roommate
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Goal
Sadie Sink, John Proctor Is the Villain
Sarah Snook, The Image of Dorian Grey

It’s arduous to not admire the audacious Sarah Snook for taking part in almost 30 characters (some pre-taped) in The Image of Dorian Grey. She’s terrific, and he or she’ll win. However what Laura Donnelly achieved final fall in The Hills of California, taking up a mere two roles however rendering herself—accent, posture, facial expressions—remarkably unrecognizable within the play’s second half, was next-level. Dorian Grey, although plenty of enjoyable, was by no means transferring, however Donnelly ensured that The Hills of California was a harrowing, devastating trip.

Finest Efficiency by a Featured Actor in a Play

Glenn Davis, Goal
Gabriel Ebert, John Proctor Is the Villain
Francis Jue, Yellow Face
Bob Odenkirk, Glengarry Glen Ross
Conrad Ricamora, Oh, Mary!

This class will doubtless come right down to Conrad Ricamora, matching Cole Escola’s model of foolish as a really queer Abraham Lincoln, and Francis Jue, reviving a tragicomic function, a model of the playwright’s father that he first performed 20 years in the past off-Broadway. A win for both could be the second time (after BD Wong in 1988) that any Asian American performer has received a Tony for a non-musical play. Solely three Asian American actors have ever received Tonys, interval, and with Darren Criss and Nicole Scherzinger in rivalry, there’s a very good likelihood that quantity will double in a single ceremony. This class will likely be shut, however it is going to be the veteran Jue by a hair.

Finest Efficiency by a Featured Actress in a Play
Tala Ashe, English
Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day
Marjan Neshat, English
Fina Strazza, John Proctor Is the Villain
Kara Younger, Goal

This can be a stunner of a class and a very difficult one to foretell, as all 5 ladies give nuanced performances and can every discover robust help. I’d forged my vote for Marjan Neshat, the wonderful actress lastly making her Broadway debut as an Iranian trainer prepping her college students for the TOEFL (English language) examination whereas trapped between two worlds. Each Neshat and Jessica Hecht are central characters of their ensemble performs, bordering on lead roles, and voters could also be wanting to award Hecht for her third nomination. However the irrepressible Kara Younger is on a tear: That is her fourth nomination on this class in 4 seasons (she received final 12 months for Purlie Victorious), and he or she’s as hilarious and transferring as ever in Goal. Search for voters to remain endlessly Younger and make the four-time nominee a two-time winner.

Finest Efficiency by a Main Actor in a Musical

Darren Criss, Perhaps Completely happy Ending
Andrew Durand, Lifeless Outlaw
Tom Francis, Sundown Boulevard
Jonathan Groff, Simply in Time
James Monroe Iglehart, A Fantastic World: The Louis Armstrong Musical
Jeremy Jordan, Floyd Collins

One other massively aggressive class that would conceivably go in 5 instructions (it’s arduous to think about a win for James Monroe Iglehart, a shock nominee, within the long-closed A Fantastic World). Jonathan Groff is wildly interesting as Bobby Darin in Simply in Time, and Jeremy Jordan is at his profession greatest because the ever-yodeling Floyd Collins. However Darren Criss will doubtless trip the wave of goodwill for Perhaps Completely happy Ending to a win right here. He’s additionally a producer on the little present, and appears to be preventing arduous for its survival throughout the board.

Finest Efficiency by a Main Actress in a Musical

Megan Hilty, Loss of life Turns into Her
Audra McDonald, Gypsy
Jasmine Amy Rogers, Boop! The Musical
Nicole Scherzinger, Sundown Boulevard
Jennifer Simard, Loss of life Turns into Her

For a lot of the season, it’s been Audra McDonald versus Nicole Scherzinger. However may this be a three-way race? Jasmine Amy Rogers vanquished each of these rivals in an all-gender class to win the Outer Critics Circle Award final month, and he or she and McDonald each received in a bigger class on the Drama Desk Awards. Tony voters love an sudden ingénue (simply take a look at Maleah Joi Moon final season), and whereas McDonald and Scherzinger have their detractors, I haven’t heard a single destructive remark about Rogers’s joyfully empowered tackle Betty Boop. However certainly one of these ladies is giving the most effective efficiency I’ve ever seen dwell in maybe the best musical theater function ever written. When all’s mentioned and finished, we’ll preserve the superlatives coming as McDonald extends her file as essentially the most Tony-winning performer in historical past.

Finest Efficiency by a Featured Actor in a Musical

Brooks Ashmanskas, Smash
Jeb Brown, Lifeless Outlaw
Danny Burstein, Gypsy
Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat
Taylor Trensch, Floyd Collins

It’s a delight to see Taylor Trensch snag his first nomination for his almost non-singing efficiency because the compassionate journalist Skeets Miller in Floyd Collins. However the winner right here will both be Danny Burstein, who’s astonishing in bringing warm-hearted, doomed optimism to Gypsy’s Herbie (his chemistry with co-star Audra McDonald is electrical), or Jak Malone, biking by doubtless dozens of roles within the peripatetic Operation Mincemeat. The latter additionally stands out for his tear-jerking rendition of “Pricey Invoice,” during which he performs a secretary reflecting on her misplaced husband. Burstein rose to the tip-top degree of Gypsy’s materials (and would get my vote), however Malone transcended the middling Operation Mincemeat.

Finest Efficiency by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Membership
Julia Knitel, Lifeless Outlaw
Gracie Lawrence, Simply in Time
Justina Machado, Actual Ladies Have Curves
Pleasure Woods, Gypsy

Pleasure Woods is heart-wrenching in a job that received Laura Benanti the Tony in 2008, and Julia Knitel delightfully performs a bevy of characters in Lifeless Outlaw, together with a teenage lady sweetly confiding her secrets and techniques to a mummified corpse. However I feel this class belongs to Natalie Venetia Belcon, the commandingly austere coronary heart of Buena Vista Social Membership. Her glare is withering, her poise is scary, and her voice is astonishing. When her Omara Portuondo (a real-life, still-living Cuban singer) breaks out into a smile and a dance, it’s a bolt of pleasure.

Finest Course of A Play

Knud Adams, English
Sam Pinkleton, Oh, Mary!
Sam Mendes, The Hills of California
Danya Taymor, John Proctor Is the Villain
Kip Williams, The Image of Dorian Grey

Final 12 months, Danya Taymor’s win for The Outsiders over Maria Friedman (Merrily We Roll Alongside) was the ceremony’s huge shocker. This 12 months, don’t be shocked when she takes house her second Tony (tying her Aunt Julie!) for an equally assured manufacturing. Kip Williams and Sam Pinkleton might each be overshadowed by their star actors, Sarah Snook and Cole Escola, respectively, who’ve change into synonymous with their exhibits. And although Knud Adams (my choose) and Sam Mendes offered the season’s most intimate, intricate stagings, these exhibits have each lengthy closed. That leaves a deserving Taymor, who’s gotten her younger ensemble forged all on the identical web page in telling a breathless, highly effective story collectively.

Finest Course of a Musical

Saheem Ali, Buena Vista Social Membership
Michael Arden, Perhaps Completely happy Ending
David Cromer, Lifeless Outlaw
Christopher Gattelli, Loss of life Turns into Her
Jamie Lloyd, Sundown Boulevard

This one’s a two-way race between the administrators of the doubtless winners for greatest musical and greatest revival: Michael Arden and Jamie Lloyd. Sundown Boulevard attracts consideration to its director like few musicals in latest reminiscence (merch from his manufacturing firm even seems within the video projections throughout the present), however Lloyd’s high-concept re-envisioning has been divisive. Those that don’t like Sundown Boulevard will coalesce across the universally beloved Arden’s playful and video game-like staging. And since some Sundown Boulevard followers can also vote for Arden (almost everybody likes Perhaps Completely happy Ending), the robotic invasion will sweep by this class. Don’t really feel dangerous for Lloyd if it does, as a result of he’ll be again subsequent season with likely extra doubtful selections with Ready for Godot and perhaps an Evita too.

Finest Authentic Rating

Will Aronson and Hue Park, Perhaps Completely happy Ending
Noel Carey and Julia Mattison, Loss of life Turns into Her
David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mincemeat
Pleasure Huerta and Benjamin Velez, Actual Ladies Have Curves
David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, Lifeless Outlaw

We don’t want a HelperBot to foretell this one. Will Aronson and Hue Park’s totally beautiful, strings-drenched rating is something however robotic. In actual fact, it might be the loveliest musical theater rating since Adam Guettel’s The Mild within the Piazza 20 years in the past. Engrave it now.

Finest Guide of a Musical

Will Aronson and Hue Park, Perhaps Completely happy Ending
David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mincemeat
Itamar Moses, Lifeless Outlaw
Marco Pennette, Loss of life Turns into Her
Marco Ramirez, Buena Vista Social Membership

If somebody’s going to steal a Tony from Perhaps Completely happy Ending’s inventive workforce, it’s right here. The query is, who? Lifeless Outlaw has a very shocking and brilliantly authentic construction and magnificence. Loss of life Turns into Her lands zinger after zinger with lethal precision. And Operation Mincemeat has received over many with its Monty Python-esque farcical strategy to navy historical past. However that many potential upstarts will break up the vote in too many instructions. Perhaps Completely happy Ending’s wry heartbreaker of a script and story will nonetheless pull this one out.

Finest Orchestrations

Will Aronson, Perhaps Completely happy Ending
Bruce Coughlin, Floyd Collins
David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sundown Boulevard
Marco Paguia, Buena Vista Social Membership
Andrew Resnick and Michael Thurber, Simply in Time

The orchestrations for Floyd Collins and Sundown Boulevard sound incredible, however they’re really beefed-up variations of the instrumentation from the ’90s. And the Buena Vista Social Membership band have already got obtained a particular Tony this 12 months (these musicians’ extraordinary improvisations absolutely have as a lot affect on the rating as what’s in Paguia’s charts). That leaves Perhaps Completely happy Ending and Simply in Time. (Michael Thurber’s personal rousing rating for Goddess can now be heard on the Public and may properly contend if that present transfers subsequent season.) It’s the uncommon musical theater composer who independently orchestrates their very own music, and Will Aronson’s instrumentation, particularly his lush and playful strings writing, is as important to the storytelling because the melody and lyrics. Give the man three Tonys, as a result of he’s earned it.

Finest Choreography

Joshua Bergasse, Smash
Camille A. Brown, Gypsy
Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck, Buena Vista Social Membership
Christopher Gattelli, Loss of life Turns into Her
Jerry Mitchell, Boop! The Musical

Boop!: The Musical, Loss of life Turns into Her, and Buena Vista Social Membership are at three corners of a various dance triangle: an ebullient old-school tap-and jazz panorama versus a serpentine, vogue-infused palate versus a tribute to Cuban rhythms and motion. All three could be worthy winners, however I’ll give the sting to Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. Buena Vista Social Membership is a musical in regards to the energy of music and the present’s choreography renders dance an inextricable a part of how that music hits house.

Finest Revival of a Play

Eureka Day
Our City
Romeo + Juliet
Yellow Face

The 2 most talked-about revivals this season—Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross—didn’t make the minimize. That leaves us with 4 productions which have closed. I feel I’d forged my vote for Kenny Leon’s imperfect however intermittently transferring manufacturing of Our City, however this race is between Eureka Day and Yellow Face. The latter is impressively refined in its satire, however Eureka Day pulled out all of the comedic stops in a crowd-pleasing scene with projections of an explosively emoji-ridden livestream chat. Voters will give one final thumbs as much as Eureka Day.

Finest Play

English
The Hills of California
John Proctor Is the Villain
Oh, Mary!
Goal

What a class. These 5 performs couldn’t be extra totally different from one another, every exemplifying the genres during which the playwrights work. For a lot of the season, I assumed Oh, Mary!, a monetary juggernaut and word-of-mouth sensation, could be undefeatable and not using a single play for voters who felt bizarre about voting for a lightweight leisure to coalesce round. Now I feel we have now one: John Proctor Is the Villain is simply as enjoyable as Oh, Mary!, till it isn’t, and playwright Kimberly Belflower’s sensible mixture of adolescent amusing awkwardness and fiercely empowering camaraderie make this present each blaringly humorous and blazingly essential. I’m nonetheless holding out hope that English, the beloved Pulitzer Prize winner that could be a grasp class in storytelling as lithe and mild as its French piano underscoring, can sneak out a victory. (I ponder whether The Hills of California and Goal could also be hampered by being barely much less profitable successors to their playwrights’ extra well-liked Broadway outings.) However as Shaina Taub’s suffragists sang final season, “The younger are on the gates.” In that case, a win for John Proctor Is the Villain will show it.

Finest Revival of a Musical

Floyd Collins
Gypsy
Pirates! The Penzance Musical
Sundown Boulevard

I used to be unconvinced by the whole lot of the Sundown Boulevard undertaking, and I simply don’t purchase that Jamie Lloyd and his collaborators really respect the present itself. Gypsy, alternatively, is about as loving a revival as you would hope for, with Audra McDonald providing a blisteringly definitive Mama Rose and director George C. Wolfe poignantly reimagining how this historic musical could make crystalline sense by a newly Black lens. However Sundown Boulevard, in its brashness (and in its holding up site visitors for the dwell video feed of the title music eight occasions per week), has demanded consideration in a approach that can doubtless repay come Sunday.

Finest Musical

Buena Vista Social Membership
Loss of life Turns into Her
Lifeless Outlaw
Perhaps Completely happy Ending
Operation Mincemeat

Perhaps Completely happy Ending almost didn’t have the funds collectively to begin performances within the fall. Within the early weeks, grosses had been perilously low. The present’s days appeared numbered. As a theater critic, I’ve by no means been prouder of the best way the critic group got here collectively in concord on November 12 to sing this little present’s praises. The crucial acclaim, heat phrase of mouth, and profitable social media technique reversed the present’s fortunes by Christmas. Lifeless Outlaw is a wild, unpredictable trip with a pleasant ensemble forged, and it may simply take house the prize in one other 12 months (it received all of the precursor awards in its off-Broadway run final season). And Loss of life Turns into Her delivers the type of glowing, snappy comedy on a grand scale that audiences rightly lap up. However Perhaps Completely happy Ending, in its marriage of wit and pathos, and of Korean and American storytelling influences, is a minimize above. It’s an totally magical work of theater, and it’ll be an undoubtedly comfortable ending for the Perhaps Completely happy Ending workforce on Tony night time.